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A RARE ARTISTIC ATTRACTION! 


THE CHRISTMAS NUMBER 

—OF— 

The New York Fashion Bazar, 

(DOUBLE NUMBER), 

WILL CONTAIN 


A Magnificent Chromo Supplement 

— OF— 

MEISSONIER’S GREAT PAINTING, 

“FRIEDLAND; 1807.” 

Napoleon Reviewing his Army. 


FROM THE ORIGINAL PICTURE NOW IN 


The Metropolitan Mnsenm of Art, Hew York, 


FOR WHICH 

$66,000 was paid at the famous Stewart sale. 

SIZE OF CHROMO 16x26 INCHES. 

This chromo will be executed in the highest style of the litho- 
graphic art, and form a most interesting and valuable picture for 
framing. 


THE CHRISTMAS NUMBER 

— OF— 


Tlie P^asliion Bazar 

WILL BE 

A Double Number, Price 60 Cents, 

WITH SPLENDID ILLUSTRATIONS, NEW AND BEAUTI- 
FUL FASHION PLATES, AND SHORT STORIES 
AND SERIALS BY POPULAR AUTHORS. 


The New York Fashion Bazar is for sale by all newsdealers 
The subscription price is $3.00 per year. 

Address GEORGrE MUNRO, Miiiiro’s Publisliing 
(P. O. Box 3751.) 17 to 27 Vandewater Street, New York, 


MTOHO^S rTTBLTCATIOITS. 


Tlie New York Fashion Bazar Book of the Toilet. 

PRICE 25 CENTS. 

This is a little book which we can recommend to every lady for the Preserva- 
tion and Increase of Health and Beauty. It contains full directions for all the 
arts and mysteries of personal decoration, and for increasing the natural 
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and body, that detract from appearance and happiness, are made the sub- 
jects of precise and excellent recipes. Ladies are instructed how to reduce 
their weight without injury to health and without producing pallor and weak- 
ness. Nothing necessary to a complete toilet book of recipes and valuable 
advice and information has been overlooked in the compilation of this volume. 

For sale by all newsdealers, or sent by mail to any address, postage pre- 
paid, on receipt of price, 25 cents, by the publisher. Address 

GEORGE MUNRO, Munro’s Publishing House, 

(P. O. Box 3751.) 17 to 27 Vandewater Street, New York. 


The New York Fashion Bazar Book of Etiiiyelte. 

PRICE 25 CENTS. 

Thhis book is a guide to good manners and the ways of fashionable society; 
a complete hand-book of behavior: containing all the polite observances of 
modern life; the Etiquette of engagements and marriages; the manners and 
training of children ; the arts of conversation and polite letter-writing ; invi- 
tations to dinners, evening parties and entertainments of all descriptions; 
table manners, etiquette of visits and public places; how to serve breakfasts, 
luncheous, dinners and teas; how to dress, travel, shop, and behave at hotels 
and watering-places. This book contains all that a ladj' and gentleman re- 
quires for correct behavior on all social occasions. 

For sale by all newsdealers, or sent by mail to any address on receipt o£ 
price, 25 cents, postage prepaid, by the publisher. Address 

GEORGE MUNRO, Munro’s Publishing House, 

(P. O. Box 3751.) 17 to 27 Vandewater Street, New York. 


THE NEW YORK FASHION BAZAR 

Model Letter-Writer and Lovers’ Oracle. 

PRICE 25 CENTS. 

This book is a complete guidei for both ladies and gentlemen in elegant 
and fashionable letter- writing: containing perfect examples of every form of 
correspondence, business letters, love letters, letters to relatives and friends, 
wedding and reception cards, invitations to entertainments, letters accepting 
and declining invitations, letters of introduction and recommendation, letters 
of condolence and duty, widows’ and widowers’ letters, love letters for all 
occasions, proposals of marriage, letters between betrothed lovers, letters of 
a young girl to her sweetheart, correspondence relating to household man- 
agement, letters accompanying gifts, etc. Every form of letter used in affairs 
of the heart will be found in this little book, it contains simple and full di- 
rections for writing a good letter on all occasions. The latest forms used in 
the best society have been carefully followed. It is an excellent manual of 
reference for all forms of engraved cards and invitations. 

For sale by all newsdealers, or sent by mail to any address, postage paid, 
on receipt of price, 25 cents, by the publisher. Address 

GEORGE MUNRO, Munro’s Publishing House, 

17 to 27 Vandewater Street, New York, 


(P. O. Box 3751.)- 


iE DAY WILL COME. 



MISS M/E. BRADDON. ^ 


.. .A 



NEW YORK: 

GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 


17 TO 27 Vandewatkr Street. 


MISS M. E. BRADDON’S WORKS ' f. ^ 

CONTAINED IN THE SEASIDE LIBRARY (POCKET EDITION).* 


NO. 

35 Lady Audley’s Secret. 

56 Phantom Fortune. 

• 74 Aurora Floyd. 

- 1 10 Under the Red Flag. 

153 The Golden Calf. 

204 Vixen. 

211 The Octoroon. 

^ 234 Barbara; or, Splendid Misery 
263 An Ishmaelite. 

315 The Mistletoe Bough. Christ- 
mas, 1884. Edited by Miss 
M. E. Braddon. 

434 Wyllard’s Weird. 

478 Dia vola ; or. Nobody’s 
Daughter. Part I. 

478 Diavola; or. Nobody’s 
Daughter. Part II. 

480 Married in Haste. Edited 
by Miss M. E. Braddon. 

487 Put to the Test. Edited by 

Miss M. E. Braddon. 

488 Joshua Haggard’s Daughter. 

489 Rupert Godwin. 

495 Mount Royal. 

496 Only a W Oman. Edited by 

Miss M. E. Braddon. 

497 The Lady’s Mile. 

498 Only a Clod. 

• 499 The Cloven Foot. 

511 A Strange World. 

515 Sir Jasper’s Tenant. 

524 Strangers and Pilgrims. 

529 The Doctor’s Wife. 

542 Fenton’s Quest. 

^ 544 Cut by the County; or, 
Grace Darnel. 


NO. 

548 The Fatal Marriage, and The 
Shadow in the Corner. 

549 Dudley Carleon; or. The 
Brother’s Secret, and 
George Caulfield’s Jour- 
ney. 

552 Hostages to Fortune. 

553 Birds of Prey. 

554 Charlotte’s Inheritance. (Se- 

quel to “Birds of Prey.”) 
557 To the Bitter End. 

559 Taken at the Flood. 

560 Asphodel. 

561 Just As I Am; or, A Living 

Lie. 

567 Dead Men’s Shoes. 

570 John Marchmont’s Legacy. 
618 The Mistletoe Bough. 
Christmas, 1885. Edited 
by Miss M. E. Braddon. 
840 One Thing Needful; or. The 
Penalty of Fate. 

881 Mohawks. 1st half. 

881 Mohawks. 2d half. 

890 The Mistletoe Bough. 
Christmas, 1886. Hdited 
by Miss M. E. Braddon. 
943 Weavers and Weft; or, 
“Love that Hath Us in 
His Net.” 

947 Publicans and Sinners; or, 
Lucius Davoren, 1st half. 
947 Publicans and Sinners; or, 
Lucius Davoren. 2d half. 
1036 Like and Unlike. 

1098 The Fatal Three. 

1211 The Day Will Come. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


CHAPTER I. 

“ Farewell, too— now at last— 

Farewell, fair lily.” 

The joy-bells clashed out upon the clear, bright air, start- 
ling the rooks in the great elm-trees that showed their leafy 
tops above the gray gables of the old church. The bells broke 
out with sudden jubilation; sudden, albeit the village had been 
on the alert for that very sound all the summer afternoon, 
uncertain as to when the signal for that joy-peal might be 
given. The signal had come now, given by the telegraph 
wires to the old postmistress, and sent on to the expectant 
ringers in the dusky church-tower. The young couple had 
arrived at Wareham Station, five miles off, and four eager 
horses were bringing them to their honey-moon home yonder, 
amid the old woods of Oheriton Chase. 

Cheriton village had been on tiptoe with expectancy ever 
since four o’clock, although common sense ought, to have in- 
formed the villagers that a bride and bridegroom who. were to 
be married at two o’clock in Westminster Abbey were not very 
likely to appear at Cheriton early in the afternoon. But the 
village, having made up its mind to a half-holiday, was glad 
to begin early. A little knot of gypsies from the last race 
meeting in the neighborhood had improved the occasion and 
set up the friendly and familiar image of Aunt Sally on the 
green in front of the Eagle Inn; while a rival establishment 
had started a pictorial shooting-gallery, with a rubicund giant’s 
face and gaping Gargantuan mouth, grinning at the populace 
across a barrow of Barcelona nuts. There are some people 
who might think Cheriton village and Cheriton Chase too re- 
mote from the busy world and its traffic to be subject to strong 
emotions of any kind. Yet even in this region of Purbeck, 
cut off from the rest of England by a winding river, ostenta- 
tiously calling itself an island, there were eager interests and 


6 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


warm feelings, and many a link with the great world of men 
and women on the other side of the stream. 

Cheriton Chase was one of the finest places in the county of 
Dorset. It lay south of Wareham, between Oorfe Castle and 
Branksea Island, and in the midst of scenery which has a 
peculiar charm of its own, a curious blending of level pasture 
and steep hill-side, barren heath and fertile water-meadow; 
here a Dutch landscape, grazing cattle and winding stream; 
there a suggestion of some lonely Scottish deer-walk; an end- 
less variety of outline; and yonder on steep, conical hill-top 
the grim stone walls and moldering bastions of Corfe Castle, 
standing dark and stern against the blue, fair-weather sky, or 
boldly confronting the force of the tempest. 

Cheriton House was almost as old as Corfe in the estimation 
of some of the country people. , Its history went back into the 
night of ages. But while the castle had suffered siege and bat- 
tery by Cromwell’s ruthless cannon, and had been left to stand 
as that arch-destroyer left it, until only the outer walls of the 
mighty fabric remained, with a tower or two, and the mullions 
of one great window standing up above the rest, the mere 
skeleton of the gigantic pile, Cheriton House had been cared 
for and added to century after century, so that it presented 
now a picturesque blending of old and new, in which almost 
every corridor and every room was a surprise to the stranger. 

Never had Cheriton been better cared for than by its pres- 
ent owner, nor had Cheriton village owned a more beneficent 
lord of the manor. And yet Lord Cheriton was an alien and 
a stranger to the soil, and that kind of ^’person whom rustics 
mostly are inclined to look down upon-~namely, a self-made 
man. • 

The present master of Cheriton #as a law-lord, created 
about fifteeii years before this day^hf clashing joy-belkj^ 
village rejoicings. He had been owner of the CheritoheSSe 
for more than twenty years, having bought the property on 
the death of the last squire, and at a time of unusual depres- 
sion. He was popularly supposed to have got the estate for 
an old song; but the old song meant something between seventy 
and eighty thousand pounds and represented the bulk of his 
wife’s fortune. He had not been afraid so to sw^mp his rich 
wife’s dowry, for he was at this time one of the most popular 
silk gowns at the equity bar. He was making four or five 
thousand a year, and he was strong in the belief in his power 
to rise higher. 

The purchase, prompted by ambition, and a desire to take 
his place among the landed gentry, had turned out a very 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


7 


lucky one from a purely commercial point of view, for a stone 
quarry that had been unworked for more than a century was 
speedily developed by the new owner of the soil, and became a 
source of income which enabled him to improve mansion house 
and farms without feeling the pinch of his outlay. 

Under Mr. Dalbrook^s improving hand the Cheriton estate, 
which had been gradually sinking to decay in the occupation 
of an exhausted race, became as perfect as human ingenuity, 
combined with Judicious outlay, can make an estate. The 
falcon eye of the master was on all things. The famous ad- 
vocate’s only idea of a holiday was to work his hardest in the 
supervision of his Dorsetshire property. He thought of 
Cheriton many a time in the law courts, as Fox used to think 
of St. Anne’s and his turnips amid the debauchery of a long 
night’s card-playing, or in the whirl of a stormy debate. Pur- 
beck might have been the motto and password of his life. He 
was born at Dorchester, the son of humble, shop-keeping par- 
ents, and was educated at the quaint old stone grammar-school 
in that good old town. All his happiest hours of boyhood had 
been spent in the Isle of Purbeck. Those watery meadc^^s 
and breezy commons and break-neck hills had been his play- 
ground; and when he went back to them as a hard-headed> _ 
overworked man of the world, made arrogant from the mag- 
nitude of a success which had never known check or retrogres- 
sion, the fountains of his heart were unlocked by the very 
atmosphere of that fertile land where the salt breath of the 
sea came tempered by the balmy perfume of the heather, the 
odor of hedge-row flowers and wild thyme. 

At Cheriton James Dalbrook unbent, forgot that he was^a 
great man, and remembered only that his lot was cast in a 
pleasant place, and that he had the sweetest and most lovable 
of wives and the loveliest of daughters. 

His daughter had been born at Cheriton, had known no 
other country home, and had never considered the second-floor 
flat in Victoria Street where her father and mother spent the 
London season, and where her father had his pied a ter re all 
the year round, in the light of a home. His daughter, Jua- 
nita, was the eldest of three children born in the old manor 
house. The two younger, both sons, died in infancy; and it 
seemed to James Dalbrook that there was a blight upon his 
offspring, such a blight as that which withered the children of 
Henry of England and Catherine of Arragon. Much had 
been given to him. He had been allowed to make name and 
fortune, he the son and heir of the little crockery-shop in a 
second-rate street of Dorchester. He had been allowed the 


8 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


lordship of broad acres, the honors and position of a rural 
squire; but he was not to be allowed that crowning glory for 
which strong men yearn. He was not to be the first of a long 
line of Barons Oheriton of Cheriton. 

After the grief and disappointment of those two deaths — 
first of an infant of a few weeks old, and afterward of a lovely 
child of two years — James Dalbrook hardened his heart for a 
little while against the fair young* sister who survived them. 
She could not perpetuate that barony which was the crown 
of his greatness; or if by special grace she were allowed to 
transmit her father^s title to the husband of her choice — 
which, in the event of her marrying judiciously and marrying 
wealth, might not be impracticable — it would be an alien to 
his race who would bear the title which he, James Dalbrook, 
had created. ^ He had so longed for a sou, and behold two 
had been given to him, and upon both the blight had fallen. 
When people praised his daughter's childish loveliness he shook 
his head despondently, thinking that she too would be taken, 
like her brothers, before ever the bud became a flower. 

His heart sickened at thought of this contingency, and of 
his heir at law in the event of his dying childless, a first cous- 
in, cle^ in an auctioneer's ofiice at Weymouth, a sandy- 
hairedi^fr^ck^^d youth, without an aspirate, with a fixed idea 
that he an authority upon dress, style, and billiards, an 
unsupportable young man under any conditions, but hateful 
to murderousness as one’s next heir. To think of that freckled 
snob strutting about the estate in years to come, blinking with 
hjs white eyelashes at those things which had been so dear to 
the dead. 

His wife, to whom he owed the estate, had no relations 
nearer or dearer to her than the freckled auctioneer was to her 
husband. There remained for them both to work out their 
plans for the disposal of that estate and fortune which was 
their own to deal with as they pleased. Already James Dal- 
brook had dim notion's of a Dalbrook Scholarship Fund, in 
which future barristers should have their long years of waiting 
upon fortune made easier to them, and for which they should 
bless the memory of the famous advocate. 

Happily those brooding fears were not realized; this time 
the bud was not blighted, the flower carried no canker in its 
heart, but opened its petals to the morning of life, a strong, 
bright blossom, reveling in sun and shower, wind and spray. 
Juanita grew from babyhood to girlhood with hardly an illness, 
save the regulation childish complaints, which touched her as 
lightly as a butterfly’s wing touches the flowers. 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


9 


Her mother was of Spanish extraction, the granddaughter 
of a Cadiz merchant, who had failed in the wine trade and had 
left his sons and daughters to carve their own way to fortune. 
Her father had gone to San Francisco at the beginning of the 
gold fever, had been one of the first to understand the safest 
way to take advantage of the situation, and had started a 
wine-shop and hotel, out of which he made a splendid fortune 
within fifteen years. He acquired wealth in good time to send 
his two daughters to Paris for their education, and by the 
time they were grown up he was rich enough to retire from 
business, and was able to dispose of his hotel and wine-store 
for a sum which made a considerable addition to his capital. 
He established himself in a brand-n^w first-fioor in one of the 
avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, a rich widower, more of an 
American than a Spaniard after his long exile, and he launched 
his two handsome daughters in Franco-American society. 
From Paris ^they went to London, and were well received in 
that upper middle-class circle in which a famous barrister 
ranks as a great man. James Dalbrook was then at the 
apogee of his success, a large, handsome man on the right 
side of his fortieth birthday. He was not by any means the, 
kind of man who would seem a likely suitor for a beautiful 
girl of three-and -twenty; but it happened that his heavily 
handsome face and commanding manner, his deep, strong 
voice and brilliant conversation, possessed just the charm that 
could subjugate Maria Moraleses fancy. He was shrewd 
enough to see that he pleased her; and he followed up his 
chances here with the same vigor with which he had pursued 
the bright goddess Fame. Within six weeks of their first 
meeting at a Eoyal Academy soiree, in the shabby old rooms 
iii Trafalgar Square, Mr. Dalbrook and Miss Morales were 
engaged, with the full consent of her father, who declared 
himself willing to give his daughter fifty thousand pounds, 
strictly settled upon herself, for her fortune, but who readily 
doubled that sum when his future son-in-law revealed his desire 
to become owner of Cheriton and to found a family. For 
such a laudable purpose, and for his favorite daughter, Mr. 
Morales was willing to make sacrifices. 

Juanita was only three years old when her father was raised 
to the bench, and she was not more than six when he was 
ollered a peerage, which he accepted promptly, very glad to 
exchange the name of Dalbrook— still extant over the old 
shop-window in Dorchester, though the old shop-keepers were 
at rest in the cemetery outside the town— for the title of first 
Baron Cheriton. 


10 


THE HAT WILL COME. 


As Lord Cheriton James Dalbrook linked himself indis- 
solubly with the lands which his wife's money had bought; 
money made in a 'Frisco wine-shop for the most part. Hap- 
pily, however, few of Lord Cheriton's friends were aware of 
that fact. Morales had traded under an assumed name in the 
miners' city, and had only resumed his patronymic on retiring 
from the bar and the wine-vaults. 

It will be seen, therefore, that Juanita could not boast of 
aristocratic lineage upon either side. Her beauty and grace, 
lier lofty carriage and high-bred air, were spontaneous as the 
beauty of a wild-flower upon one of those furzy knolls over 
which her young feet had bounded in many a girlish race with 
lier dogs or her chosen companion of the hour. She looked 
like the daughter of a duke, although one of her grandfathers 
had sold pots and pans, and the other had kept order, with a 
bowie-knife and revolver in his belt, over the humors of a 
'Frisco tavern, in the days when the city was still in its rough- 
and-tumble infancy, fierce as a bull-pup. Her father, who, as 
the years went on, worshiped this only child of his, never for- 
got that she lacked that one sovereign advantage of good birth 
and highly placed kindred; and thus it was that from her 
childhood he had been on the watch for some alliance which 
should give her these advantages. 

The opportunity had soon offered itself. Among his Dor- 
setshire neighbors one of the most distinguished was Sir God- 
frey Carmichael, a man of old family and good estate, highly 
connected on the maternal side, well connected all round. 
Sir Godfrey showed himself friendly from the hour of Mr. 
Dalbrook's advent in the neighborhood. He declared himself 
delighted to welcome new blood, when it came in the person 
of a man of talent and power. The friendship thus begun 
never knew any interruption till it ended suddenly in a plowed 
field between Wareham and Winbourne, where Sir Godfrey's 
jiorse blundered at a fence, fell, and rolled over his rider, ten 
years after Juanita's birth. 

There were two daughters and a son, who succeeded his fa- 
ther at the age of fifteen, and who had been Juanita's play- 
fellow ever since she could run alone. 

The two fathers had talked together of the possibilities of 
the future, while their children were playing tennis on the 
lawn at Cheriton or gathering blackberries on the common. 
Sir Godfrey was enough a man of the world to rejoice in the 
idea of his son's marriage with the heiress of Cheriton, albeit 
he knew that the little dark-eyed girl, with the tall, slim fig- 
ure and graceful movements, had no place amojig the salt of 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


11 


the earth. His own estate was a poor thing compared with 
Cheriton, as Dalbrook had improved and beautified it, and the 
Cheriton stone quarries; and he knew that Dalbrook 's profes- 
sional earnings had accumulated into a very respectable fort- 
une invested in stocks and shares of the soundest quality. Al- 
together his son could hardly do better than continue to attach 
himself to that dark-eyed child as he was attaching himself 
now in his first year at Eton, riding his pony over to Cheriton 
every non-hunting day and ministering to her childish caprices 
in all things. 

The two mothers had talked of the future with more detail 
and more assurance than the fathers, as men of the world, had 
ventured upon. Lady Cheriton was in love with her little 
girEs boyish admirer. His frank, handsome face, open-hearted 
manner, and undeniable pluck, realized her ideal of high-bred 
youth. His mother was the daughter of an earl, his grand- 
mother was the niece of a duke. He had the right to call an 
existing duke his cousin. These things counted for much in 
the mind of the store-keeper^'s daughter. Her experience at a 
fashionable Parisian convent had taught her to worship rank; 
her experience of English middle-class society had not eradi- 
cated that weakness. And then she saw that this fine, frank 
lad was devoted to her daughter with all a boy^s ardent feeling 
for his first childish sweetheart: 

The years went on, and young Godfrey Carmichael and 
Juanita Dalbrook were sweethearts still — sweethearts always — 
sweethearts when he was at Eton, sweethearts when he was at 
Oxford, sweethearts in union, and sweethearts in absence, 
neither of them ever imagining any other love; and now, on 
this brilliant July afternoon, the sun still above the horizon at 
seven o^clock, the bells of Cheriton Church were ringing a joy- 
peal to celebrate their wedded loves, and the little street was 
gay with floral archways and bright-colored bunting, and 
mottoes of welcome and greeting, and Lady Cheriton^s 
barouche was bringing the bride and bridegroom to their first 
honey-moon dinner, as fast as four horses could trot along the 
level road from quiet little Wareham. 

By a curious fancy Juanita had elected to spend her honey- 
moon in that one house of which she ought to have been most 
weary, the good old house in which she had been born, and 
where all her days of courtship, a ten years" courtship, had 
been spent. In vain had the fairest scenes of Europe been 
suggested to her. She had traveled enough to be indifferent 
to mountains and lakes, glaciers and fjords. 

“I have seen just enough to know that there is no place like 


12 


THE DAY WILL CpME. 


home/^ she said, with her pretty air of authority. ‘" I won’t 
have a honey-moon at all if I can’t have it at Cheriton. I 
want to feel what it is like to have you all to myself in my 
own place^ Godfrey, among all the things I love. I shall feel 
like a queen with a sl^ve; I shall feel like Delilah with Sam- 
son. When you are quite tired of Cheriton — and subjecticn, 
you shall take me to the Priory; and once there you shall be 
master, and 1 will be slave. ” 

“ Sweet mastership, tyrannous slavery,” he answered, laugh- 
ing. “ My darling, Cheriton will suit me better than any 
other place in the world for my honey-moon, for I shall be 
near my future electors, and shall be able to study the polit- 
ical situation in all its bearings upon — the Isle of Purbock.” 

Sir Godfrey was to stand for his division of the county in 
the election that was looming in the distance of the late au- 
tumn. He was very confident of success, as a young man 
might be who came of a time-honored race, and knew himself 
popular in the district, armed with all the newest ideas, too, 
full to the brim of the most modern intelligence, a brilliant 
debater at Oxford, a favorite everywhere. His marriage would 
increase his popularity and strengthen his position with the 
latent power of that larger wealth which must needs be his in 
the future. 

The sun was shining in golden glory upon gray stone roofs 
and gray stone walls, clothed with rose and honeysuckle, 
clematis and trumpet ash — upon the village forge, where 
there had been no work done since the morning, where the fire 
was out, and the men were lounging at the door and window 
in their Sunday clothes — upon the three or four village shops 
and the two village inns, the humble little house of call oppo- 
site the forge, with its queer old sign, ‘‘ Live and Let Live,” 
and the good old George Hotel, with sprawling, dilapidated 
stables and spacious yard, where coaches used to stop in the 
daysdhat were gone. 

There was a floral arch between the little tavern and the 
forge, a floral display along the low rustic front of the butcher’s 
shop, and the cottage post-office was converted into a bower. 
There were calico mottoes flapping across the road»— “ Wel- 
come to the Bride and Bridegroom,” “ God Bless Them Both, ” 
“Long Life and Happiness,” and other fond and hearty 
phrases of time-honored familiarity. But those clashing bells, 
with their sound of tumultuous gladness, a joy that clamored 
to the blue skies above and the woods below, and out to the 
very sea yonder, in its loud exuberance, those and the smiling 
faces of the villagers were the best of all welcomes. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


13 


There were gentlefolks among the crowd — a string of pony- 
carts and carriages drawn up on the long slip of waste grass 
beyond the forge, just where the road turned off to Cheriton 
Chase; and there were two or three horsemen, one a young 
man upon a fine bay cob, who had been walking his horse 
about restlessly for the last hour or so, sometimes riding half 
a mile toward the station in his impatience. 

The carriage came toward the turning-point, the bride bow- 
ing and smiling as she returned the greetings of gentle and 
simple. Emotion had paled the delicate olive of her com- 
plexion, but her large, dark eyes were luminous with gladness 
and a happy faith in the new life before her. Her sk-aw- 
colored Indian silk gown and Leghorn hat were the perfection 
of simplicity, and seemed to surround her with an atmosphere 
of Coolness amid the dust and glare of the road. 

At sight of the young man on the bay horse she put her 
hand on Sir Godfrey's arm and said something to him, on 
which he told the coachman to stop. They had driven slowly 
through the village, and the horses pulled up readily at the 
turn of the road. » 

“ Only to think of your coming so far to greet us, Theo- 
dore,-’^ said Juanita, leaning out of the carriage to shake hands 
with the owner of the cob. 

“ I wanted to be among the first to welcome you, that was 
all,’^ he answered, quietly. ‘‘ I had half a mind to ride to the 
station and be ready to hand you into your carriage, but I 
thought Sir Godfrey might think me a nuisance. 

“ No fear of that, my dear Dalbrook. I should have been 
very glad to see you. Did you ride all the way from Dor- 
chester?’^ 

“ Yes; 1 came over early in the morning, breakfasted with 
a friend, rested the cob all day, and now he is ready to carry 
me home again. ” 

“ What devotion!” said Juanita, laughingly, yet with a 
shade of embarrassment. 

“ What good exercise for Peter, you mean. Keeps him in 
condition against the cubbing begins. God bless you, Jua- 
nita. I can’t do better than echo the invocation above our 
heads, ‘ God Bless the Bride and Bridegroom.’ ” 

He shook hands with them both for the second time. A 
faint glow of crimson swept 'over his frank, fair face as he 
clasped those hands. His honest blue eyes looked at his cous- 
in for a moment with grave tenderness, in W'hich there was the 
shadow of a life-long regret. He had loved and wooed her, 
and resigned her to her more favored lover, and he was honest 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


14 

to the oofe of his heart in his desire for her happiness. His 
own gladness, his own life, seemed to him of small accouni 
when weighed against her well-being. 

You must come and dine with us before we leave Cheri- 
ton, Dalbrook,^^ said Sir Godfrey. 

“ You are very good. 1 am o2 to Heidelberg for a holiday 
as soon as I can wind up my office work. 1 will offer myself 
to you later on, if may, when you are settled at the Priory.'’^ 

‘‘ Come when you like. Good-bye. 

The carriage turned the corner. The crowd burst into a 
cheer, one, two, three, and then another one, and then again 
louder than the first, and the horses were on the verge of bolt- 
ing for the rest of the way to Oheriton. 

Theodore Dalbrook rode slowly away from the village fes- 
tivities, rode away from the clang of the joy^bells and the 
sound of rustic triple bob majors. It would be night before 
he reached Dorchester; but there was a moon, and he knew 
everf^ yard of high-road, every grassy ride across the wide, bar- 
ren heath between Cheriton and the old Roman city. He 
knew the road and he knew his horse, which was as good of 
its kind as there was to be found in the county of Dorset. 
He was not a rich man, and he had to work hard for his liv- 
ing, but he was the son of a well-to-do father, and he never 
stinted the price of the horse that carried him, and which was 
something more to Theodore Dalbrook than most men’s 
horses are to them. It was his own familiar friend, com- 
panion, and solace. A man might have understood as much 
only to see him lean over the cob’s neck, and pat him, as he 
did to-night, riding slowly up the hill that leads from Cheri- 
ton to the wild ridge of heath above Branksea Island. 

Theodore Dalbrook, junior partner in the firm of Dalbrook 
& Son, Cornhill, Dorchester, was a more distant relative of 
Juanita’s than the sandy first cousin in the auctioneer’s office 
whom Lord Cheriton had once hated as the only alternative 
to a charitable endowment. The sandy youth was the eldest 
son of Lord Cheriton’s only brother, long since dead. Theo- 
dore was the grandson of a certain Matthew Dalbrook, a 
second cousin of Lord Cheriton’s, and once upon a time the 
wealthiest and most important member of the Dalbrook family. 
The simple couple in the crockery-shop had looked up to 
Matthew Dalbrook, solicitor, with a handsome old house in 
Cornhill, a smart gig, a stud of three fine horses, and half the 
county people for his clients. To the plain folks behind the 
counter, who dined at one and supped on cold meat and 
pickles and Dutch cheese at nine of the clock, Mr. Dalbrook, 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


15 


the lawyer, was a great man. They were moved by his con- 
descension when he droi)ped in to the five-o’clock tea and 
talked over old family reminiscences, the farm-house on the 
Weymouth road which was the cradle of their race, and where 
they had all known good days while the old people were alive, 
and while the homestead was a family rendezvous. That he 
should deign to drink tea in the little parlor behind the shop, 
he who had a drawing-room almost as big as a church, and a 
man-servant in plain clothes to wait upon him at his six- 
o’clock dinner, was a touching act of humility in their eyes. 
When their younger boy brought home prizes and certificates 
of all kinds from the grammar-school it was from Matthew 
they sought advice, modestly, and with the apprehension of 
being deemed overambitious. 

“ I’m afraid he’s too much of a scholar for the business,” 
said the mother, shyly, looking fondly at her tall, overgrown 
son, pallid with rapid growth and overmuch Greek and Latin;. 

“ Of course he is; that boy is too good to sell pots and nans; 
You must send him to the university, Jim.” * 

Jim, the father, looked despondently at James, the son. 
The university meant something awful in the crockery mer- 
chant’s mind; a vast expenditure of money; dreadful hazards 
to religion and morals; friendships with dukes and marquises, 
whose influence would alienate the boy from his parents, and 
render him scornful of the snug back parlor, with his grand- 
father’s portrait over the mantel-piece, painted in oils by a 
gifted townsman, who had once had a picture very nearly hung 
in the Eoyal Academy. 

“ I couldn’t afford to send him to college,” he said. 

“ Oh, but you must afford it. 1 must help you, if you and 
Sarah haven’t got enough in an old stocking anywhere — as I 
dare say you have. My boys are at the university, and they 
didn’t do half as well at the grammar-school as your boy has 
done. He must go to Cambridge, he must be entered at 
Trinity Hall, and if he works hard and keeps steady he needn’t 
cost you a fortune. You would work, eh, James?” 

“ Wouldn’t I just, that’s all,” James replied, with em- 
phasis! 

His heart had sickened at the prospect of the crockery busi- 
ness; the consignments of pots and pans; they returned 
empties, invoices, quarterly accounts, matchings, rivetings, 
dust, straw, dirt, and degradation. He could not see the 
nobility of labor in that dusty shop, below the level of the 
pavement, amid ewers and basins, tea-cups, and beer- jugs, 
sherries and ports. But to work in the university — hard by 


16 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


that great college where Bacon had worked, and Newton, and 
a host of the mighty dead, and where Whewell, a self-made 
man, was still he^i — to work among the sons of gentlemen, 
and with a view to the profession of a gentleman. That would 
be labor for which to live; for which to die, if need be. 

“ If —if mother and me was to strain a p’int,^^ mused the 
crockery man, who was better able to afford the university for 
his son than many a gentleman of Dorset whose boys had to 
be sent there willy-njilly — “ if mother and me that have 
worked so hard for our money was willing to spend a goodish 
bit of it upon sending him to college, what are we to do with 
him after we’ve made a fine gentleman of him? Tliafs where 
it is, you see. Matt.” 

“ You are not going to make a fine gentleman of him, God 
forbid. If he does well at Cambridge you can make a lawyer 
of him. Trinity Hall is the nursery of lawyers. You can 
article him to me; and look you here, Jim, if I don’t have to 
help you pay for his education. I’ll give him his articles. 
There, now, what do you say to that?” 

The offer was pronounced a generous one, and worthy of a 
blood relation; but James Dalbrook never took advantage of 
his kinsman’s kindness. His university career was as success- 
ful as his progress at the quaint old grammar-school, and his 
college friends, who were neither dukes nor marquises, but 
fairly sensible young men, all advised him to apply himself to 
the higher branch of the law. So James Dalbrook of Trinity 
Hall eat bis dinners at the Temple during his last year of un- 
der-grad dfetje life, came out seventh wrangler, was called to 
the bar, and. in due course wore crimson, velvet, and ermine, 
and became Lord Oheriton, a man whose greatness in some 
v/ise overshadowed the small provincial dignity of the house of 
Matthew Dalbrook, erstwhile head of the family. 

The Dalbrooks of Dorchester had gone upon their way 
quietly/ thriving, respected, but in nowise distinguished. 
Matthew, junior, had succeeded his father, Matthew, senior, 
and the firm in Cornhill had been Dalbrook & Son for more 
than thirty years; and now Theodore, the eldest of a family 
of five, was Son, and his grandfather, the founder of the firm, 
was sleeping the sleep of the just in the cemetery outside Dor- 
chester. 

Lord Oheriton was too wise a man to forget old obligations 
or to avoid his kindred. There was nothing to be ashamed of 
in his connection with a thoroughly reputable firm like Dal- 
brook & Son. They might be provincial, but their name was 
a synonym for honor and honesty. They had taken as firm 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


17 


root in the land as the county families whose title-deeds and 
leases, wills and codicils, they kept. They were well-bred, 
well-educated. God-fearing people, with no struggling ambi- 
tions, no morbid craving to get upon a higher social level than 
the status to which their professional position and their means 
entitled them. They rode and drove good horses, kept good 
servants, lived in a good house, visited among the county peo- 
ple with moderation, but they made no pretensions to being 
“ smart. They offered no sacrifices of fortune or self-re- 
spect to the modern Moloch, Fashion. 

There was a younger son called Harrington, destined for 
the Church, and with advanced views upon church architecture 
and music, and there were two unmarried daughters, Janet 
and Sophia, also with advanced views upon the woman^s rights 
question, and with a sovereign contempt for the standard 
young lady. 

Theodore^s lines were marked out for him with inevitable 
precision. He had been taken into partnership the day he 
was out of his articles, and at seven-and-twenty he was his 
father’s right hand, and represented all that was modern and 
popular in the firm. He was steady as a rock, had an intellect 
of singular acuteness, a ready wit and very pleasing manners. 
He had, above all things, the inestimable gift of an equable 
and happy temper. He had been everybody’s favorite from 
the nursery upward, popular at school, popular at the uni- 
versity, popular in the local club, popular in the hunting-field; 
and it was the prevailing opinion of Dorchester that bought 
to marry an heiress and make a great position for the house, of 
Dalbrook. Some people had* gone so far as to say that he 
ought to marry Lord Oheriton’s daughter. 

He had been made free of the great house at Cheriton from 
the time he was old enough to visit anywhere. His family had 
been bidden to all notable festivities; had been duly called 
upon, at not too long intervals, by Lady Cheriton. He had 
ridden by Juanita’s side in many a run with the South Dorset 
fox-hounds, and had waited about with her outside many a 
covert. They had picnicked and made gypsy tea at Corfe 
Castle; they had rambled in the woods near Studland; they 
had sailed to Branksea, and, further away, to Lulworth Cove, 
and the romantic caves of Stare; but this had been all in frank, 
cousinly friendship. Theodore had seen only too soon that 
there was no room for him in his kinswoman’s heart. He 
began by admiring her as the loveliest girl he had ever seen; 
he had ended by adoring her, and he adored her still, but with 
a loyal regard which accepted her position as another man’s 


18 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


wife; and he would have died sooner than dishonor her by one 
unholy thought. 

It was nearly ten o’clock when he rode slowly along the 
avenue that led into Dorchester. The moon was shining be- 
tween the leafy tops of the tall elms, whose overarching boughs 
recalled the familiar image of a vaulted aisle. The road, with 
that high, overarching roof, had a solemn look in the moonlit 
stillness. The Eoman amphitheater yonder, grassy banks sug- 
gested the semicircular benches of stone, shone white in the 
moonbeams; the old town seemed half asleep. The house in 
Oornhill had a very Philistine look as compared with that fine 
old mansion of Cheriton, which was present to his mind in 
very vivid colors to-night, those two wandering ^about the old 
Italian garden, hand in hand, wedded lovers, with the lamp- 
lit rooms open to the soft summer night, and the long 
terrace and stone balustrade and moss-grown statues of sylvan 
gods all silvered by the moonbeams. The Oornhill house was 
a fine old house notwithstanding, a paneled house of the 
Georgian era, with a wide entrance hall, and a well-staircase 
with carved oak balusters and baluster-rail a foot broad. The 
furniture had been very little changed since the days of Theo- 
dore’s great-grandfather, for the late Mrs. Dalbrook had cher- 
ished no yearnings for modern art in the furniture Ihie. Her 
gentle spirit had looked up to her husband as a leader of men, 
and had reverenced chairs and tables, bureaus and wardrobes 
that had belonged to his grandfather, as if they were made 
sacred by that association. And thus the good old house in 
the good old town had a savor of. by-gone generations, an old 
family air which the parvemc would buy for much gold if he 
could. True, that the dining-room chairs were overponder- 
ous, and the dining-room pictures belonged to the obscure 
school of religious art in which you can only catch your saint 
or your martyr at one particular angle, yet the chairs were of 
a fine antique form and bore the crest of the Dalbrooks on 
their shabby leather backs, and the pictures had a respectable 
brownness which might mean Holbein or Eembrandt. 

The drawing-room was large and bright, with four narrow, 
deeply recessed windows commanding the broad street and the 
Peacock Plotel over the way, and deep window-seats crammed 
with flowers. Here the oak paneling had been painted pale 
pink, and the moldings picked out in a deeper tint by success- 
ive generations of Vandals; but the effect was cheerful, and 
the pale walls made a good background for the Chippendale 
secretaries and cabinets filled with willow-pattern Worcester or 
Crown Derby. The window-curtains were dark-brown cloth, 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


19 


with a border of Berlin wool lilies and roses, a border which 
would have set the teeth of an aesthete on edge, but which 
blended with the general brightness of the room. Old Mrs. 
Matthew Dalbrook, the grandmother, and her three spinster 
daughters had toiled over those cross-stitch borders, and Theo- 
dore’s mother would have deemed it sacrilege to have put 
aside curtains so embellished. 

Harrington Dalbrook and his two sisters were in the draw- 
ing-room, each apparently absorbed in an instructive book, 
and yet all three had been talking for the greater part of the 
evening. It was a characteristic of their highly intellectual 
lives to nurse a volume of Herbert Spencer or a treatise upon 
the deeper mysteries of Buddha, while they discussed the con- 
duct or morals of their neighbors — or, on the feminine part, 
their gowns and bonnets. 

‘‘ I thought you were never coming home, Theo,’’^ said 
Janet. “ You doiiT mean to say you waited to see the bride 
and bridegroom?^^ 

“ That is exactly what I do mean to say. I had to get old 
Sandown^s lease executed, and when I had finished my busi- 
ness I waited about to see them arrive. Do you think you 
could get me anything in the way of supper, Janie 

‘‘ Father went to bed ever so long ago,^^ replied Janet; 
“ it’s dreadfully late. 

But I don’t suppose the cook has gone to bed, and per- 
haps she would condescend to cut me a sandwich or two,” an- 
swered Theodore, ringing the bell. 

His sisters were orderly young women who objected to eat- 
ing and drinking out of regulation hours. Janet looked round 
the room discontentedly, thinking that her brother would 
make crumbs. Young men, she had observed, are almost 
miracle workers in the way of crumbs. They can get more 
superfluous crumbs out of any given piece of bread than the 
entire piece would appear to contain, looked at by the casual 
eye. 

1 have found a passage in Spencer which most fully bears 
out my view, Theodore,” said Sophia, severely, referring to an 
argument she had had with her brother the day before yester- 
day. 

“ How did she look?” asked Janet, openly frivolous for the 
nonce. 

‘‘ Lovelier than I ever saw her look in her life,” answered 
Theodore. At least I thought so.” 

He wondered, as he said these words, whether it had been 
his own despair at the thought of having irrevocably lost her 


20 


THE DAY WILL C03IE. 


which invested her familiar beauty with a new and mystic 
power. “ Yes, she looked exquisitely lovely and completely 
happy — an ideal bride. 

If her nose were a thought longer her face would be almost 
perfect,’^ said Janet. “ How was she dressed 

“ I could no more tell you than I could say how many petals 
there are in that Dijon rose yonder. She gave me an impres- 
sion of cool, soft color. I think there was yellow in her hat — 
pale yellow, like a primrose. 

Men are such dolts about women’s dress,” retorted Janet, 
impatiently; “ and yet they pretend to have taste and judg- 
ment, and to criticise everything we wear.” 

“ I think you may rely upon us for knowing what we do7i^^ 
like,” said Theodore. 

He seated himself in his father’s easy-chair, a roomy old 
chair with projecting sides, that almost hid him from the 
other occupants of the room. He was weary and sad, and 
their chatter irritated his overstrung nerves. He would have 
gone straight to his own room on arriving, but that would have 
set them wondering, and he did not want to be wondered 
about. He wanted to keep his secret, or as much of it as he 
could. ]Sio doubt those three knew that he had been fond of 
her, very fond ; that he would have sacrificed half his life-time 
to win her for the other half; but they did not know how fond. 
They did not know that he would have melted down all the 
sands of time into one grain of gold — if he could — for one 
golden day in which to hold her to his heart and know she 
loved him. 


CHAPTER 11. 

“ And warm and light I felt her clasping hand 
When twined in mine; she followed where I went.” 

There is a touch of childishness in all honey-moon couples, 
a something which suggests the babes in the wood, left to play 
together by the arch-deceiver. Fate; wandering hand in hand 
in the morning sunshine, gathering flowers, pleased with the 
mossy banks and leafy glades, before ever hunger or cold or 
fear came upon them, before the shadow of night and death 
stole darkly on their path. Even Godfrey Carmichael, a sen- 
sible, highly educated young man, whose pride it was to march 
in the van of progress and enlightenment, even he had that 
touch of childishness which is adorable in a lover, and which 
lasts, oh, so short a time: even as the bloom on the peach, the 
down on the butterfly’s wing, the morning dew on a rose. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


21 


He had loved her all his life, as it seemed to him. They 
had been companions, friends, lovers, for longer than either 
could remember, so gradual had been the growth of love. Yet 
the privilege of belongin^o each other was none the less sweet 
because of this old familiarity. 

“ Are we really married —really husband and wife — God- 
frey.^'’'’ asked Juanita, nestling to his side, as they stood to- 
gether in the wide veranda where they breakfasted on these 
peerless July mornings among roses and clematis. Husband 
and wife — such prosaic words. I heard you speak of me to 
the vicar yesterday as ‘ my wife.^ It gave me quite a shock. 

‘‘ Were you sorry to think it was true?^^ 

Sorry— no! But wife. The word has such a matter-of- 
fact sound. It means a person who writes checks for the 
house accounts, revises the bill of fare, and takes all the blame 
when the servants do wrong?^'’ 

“ Shall 1 call you my idol, then, my goddess, the enchant- 
ress whose magic wand wafts gladness and sunshine over my 
existence?^^ 

“No, call me wife. It is a good word, after all, Godfrey — a 
good, serviceable word, a word that will stand wear and tear. 
It means forever. 

They breakfasted Ute-a-Ute in their bower of roses; they 
wandered about the Chase or sat in the garden all day long. 
They led an idle, desultory life like little children, and won- 
dered that evening came so soon, and stayed up late into the 
summer night, steeping themselves in the glory of that world 
of starshine and silence which seemed new to them in their 
mutual delight. 

There was a lovely view from that broad terrace, with its 
Italian balustrade and statues, its triple flight of marble steps 
descending to an Italian garden, which had been laid out in 
the Augustan age of Pope and Addison, when the distinctive 
feature of a great many’s garden was stateliness. Here was 
the lover’s favorite loitering-place when the night grew late, 
Juanita looking like Juliet in her loose white silk tea-gown, 
with its Venetian amplitude of sleeve and its mediaeval gold 
embroidery. The fashionable dress-maker who made that 
gown had known how to adapt her art to Miss Cheriton’s 
beauty. The long, straight folds accentuated every perfect 
line of the finely molded figure, fuller than the average girlish 
figure, suggestive of J uno rather than Psyche. She was two 
inches taller than the average girl, and looked almost as tall 
as her lover as she stood beside him in the moonlight, gazing 
dreamily at the landscape. 


22 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


This hushed aud solemn hour on the verge of midnight was 
their favorite time. Then only were they really alone, sepuro 
in the knowledge that all the household was sleeping, and that 
they had their world verily to themselves, and might be as 
foolish as they liked. Once at sight^f a shooting star Juanita 
flung herself upon her lover^s breast and sobbed aloud. It 
was some niinutes before he could soothe her. 

My love, my love, what does it mean?'^ he asked, mysti- 
fied by her agitation. 

“ 1 saw the star, and I prayed that we might never be part- 
ed; aud then it flashed upon me that we might, and I could 
not bear the thought,’^ she sobbed, clinging to him like a 
frightened child. 

“ My dear one, what should part us, except death 

“ Ah, Godfrey, death is everywhere. How could a good 
God make His creatures so fond of each other, and yet part 
them so cruelly as He does sometimes 

“ Only to unite them again in another world. Nita, I feel 
as if our two lives must go on in an endless chain, circling 
among those stars yonder, which could not have been made to 
go forever unpeopled. There are happy lovers there at this 
instant, I am convinced — lovers who have lived before us 
here, and have been translated to a higher life yonder; lovers 
who have tasted the pangs of parting, the ecstasy of reunion. ” 

He glanced vaguely toward that starry heaven, while he 
fondly smoothed the dark hair upon Juanita^s brow, which 
looked like statuary marble in the moonlight. It was not easy 
to win her back to cheerfulness. That dreadful vision of pos"- 
sible grief had too completely possessed her. Godfrey was fain 
to be serious, finding her spirits too shaken; so they talked to- 
gether gravely of that unknown hereafter whipli philosophy 
and religion may map out with mathematical distinctness, but 
which remains to the individual soul forever mysterious and 
awful. 

Her husband -found it wiser to talk of solemn things, find- 
ing her so sad, and she took comfort from that serious con- 
versation. 

“ Let us lead good lives, dear, and hope for the best in other 
worlds,^’ he said. “ There is sound sense in the Buddhist 
theory, that we are the makers of our own spiritual destiny, 
and that a man may be in advance of his fellow- men, even in 
getting to heaven.’’^ 

The next day was the first the lovers devoted to practical 
things. They started directly after breakfast for a tete-a-tete 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


33 


drive to the Priory, where certain alterations and improve- 
ments were contemplated in the rooms which were to be 
Juanita’s. Godfrey’s widowed mother, Lady Jane Carmichael, 
had transferred herself and her belongings to a villa at Swan- 
age, where she was devoting herself to the creation of a gar- 
den, which was, on a small scale, to repeat the beauties of her 
Hat, old-fashioned flower garden at the Priory. It irked her 
somewhat to think how long the hedges of yew and holly 
would take to grow; but there was a certain pleasure in crea- 
tion. She was a mild, loving creature, with an aristocratic 
profile, silvery gray hair, and a small, fragile figure; a woman 
who looked a patrician to her finger tips, and whomaeverybody 
imposed upon. Her blue blood had not endowed her with the 
power to rule. She adored her son, was very fond of Juanita, 
and resigned her place in her old home without a sigh. 

“ The Priory was a great deal too big for me,’' she told her 
particular friends. “ I used to feel horribly dismal there when 
Godfrey was at Oxford, and afterward, for of course he was 
often away. It was only in the shooting season that the house 
looked cheerful. I hope they will soon have a family, and 
then that will enliven the place a little. ” 

A seven-mile drive in the fresh morning air along the level 
road between Corfe and Wareham, a region of marsh and 
watery meadow, where the cattle gave charm and variety to a 
landscape which would have been barren and monotonous 
without them, a place of winding streams on which the sum- 
mer sunlight was shining. 

The Priory was by no means so fine a place as Cheriton, 
but it was old and not without interest, and Lady Jane was 
justified in the assertion that it was too large for her. It 
would be too small, perhaps, for Sir Godfrey and his wife in 
the days to come, when, in the natural course of events, James 
Halbrook would be at rest atter his life labor, and Cheriton 
would belong to Juanita. 

“ No doubt they will like Cheriton better than the Priory 
when we are all dead and gone,” said Lady Jane, with her 
plaintive air. “ I only hope they will have a family.” 

This jdea of a family was almost a craze with Lady Jane 
Carmichael. She had idolized her only son, had been miser- 
able at every parting, and it had seemed a hard thing to her 
that there was not more of him, as she had herself expressed it. 

Godfrey has been the dearest boy; I only wish I had six of 
him,” she would say, piteously; and now her mind projected 
itself into the future, and she pictured a bevy of grandchildren 
—numerous as a covey of partridges in the upland fields of 


2i . THE DAY WILL COME. 

the home farm at Cheriton — and fancied herself lavishing her 
hoarded treasures of love upon them. She had grandchildren 
already, and to spare, the offspring of a married- daughter, 
but these were not Carmichaels, and, though they were very 
dear to her maternal heart, they were not what Godfrey’s chil- 
dren would be to her. 

She would be gone, she told herself, before they would be 
old enough to forsake her. She would be gone before those 
young birds grew too strong upon the wing. A blessed spell 
of golden years lay before her; a nursery and then a school- 
room; and then, perhaps, before the last dim closing scene, a 
bridal, a granddaughter clinging to her in the sweet sadness of 
leave-taking, a fair young face, crowned with orange-flowers, 
pressed against her own in the bride’s happy kiss — and then 
she would say JVunc dwiittis, and feel that her cup of glad- 
ness had been filled to the prim. 

The lovers’ talk was all of that shadowy future as the pair 
of grays bowled gayly along the level road. The horses were 
Godfrey’s favorite pair, and belonged to a team of chestnuts 
and grays which had won him some distinction last season in 
Hyde Park, when the coaches met at the corner by the Maga- 
zine, and when the handsome Miss Dalbrook, Lord Cheriton’s 
heiress, was the cynosure of many eyes. The thoughts of Sir 
Godfrey and his wife were far from Hyde Park and the Four- 
in-hand Club this morning. Their minds were filled with 
simple rural anticipations, and had almost a patriarchal turn, 
as of an Arcadian pair whose wealth was all in flocks and 
herds, and green pastures like those by which they were driv- 
ing. 

The Priory stood on low ground between Wareham and 
Winbourne, sheltered from the north by a bold ridge of heath, 
screened on the east by a little wood of oaks and chestnuts, 
Spanish chestnuts, with graceful, drooping branches, whose 
glossy leaves contrasted with the closer foliage of rugged old 
oaks. The house was built of ,Purbeck stone, and its bluish- 
gray was touched with shades of gold and silvery green where 
the lichens and mosses crept over it, while one long southern 
wall was clothed with trumpet-ash and magnolia, myrtle and 
rose, as with a closely interwoven curtain of greenery, from 
which the small latticed windows flashed back the sunshine. 

Nothing at the Priory was so stately as its counterpart at 
Cheriton. There were marble balustrades and rural gods there 
on the terrace; here there was only a broad gravel walk along 
the southern front, with a little, old, shabby stone temple at 
each end. At Cheriton three flights of marble steps led from 


THE DAY WILL COME, 


25 


the terrace to the Italian garden, and then again three more 
flights led to a garden on a lower level, and so, by studied 
gradations, to the bottom of the slope on which the mansion 
was built. Here house and garden were on the same level, 
and those gardens which Lady Jane bad so loved and cherished 
were distinguished only by an elegant simplicity. Between the 
garden and a park of less than fifty acres there was only a sunk 
fence, and the sole glory of that modest domain lay in a herd 
of choice Channel Island cows, which had been Lady Janet’s 
pride. She had resigned them to Juanita without a sigh, 
although each particular beast had been to her as a friend. 

My dear, what could I do with cows in a villa?^^ she said, 
wLen Juanita suggested that she should at least keep her favor- 
ites, Beauty and Maydew and Coquette. Of course, as you 
say, I could rent a couple of paddocks; but I should not like 
to see the herd divided. Besides, you will want them all by 
and by, when you have a family. 

Nita stepped lightly across the threshold of her future home. 
The old gray porch was imbedded in roses and trailing passion- 
flowers. Everything had a shabby, old-world look, compared 
with Cheriton, which James Dalbrook had improved out of all 
antique character. Here there had been no improvement for 
over a century; all things had been quiescent as in the palace 
of the sleeping beauty. 

“ What a dear old house it is, Godfrey, and how everything 
in it speaks to me of your ancestors — your own ancestors — not 
other people’s! That makes all the difference. At Cheriton 
I feel always as if I were surrounded by malevolent ghosts. I 
can’t see them, but I know they are there. Those poor Strang- 
ways, how they must hate me!” 

“ If there are any living Strangways knocking about the 
world homeless, or at any rate landless, I don’t suppose they 
feel overkindly disposed to you,” said Godfrey; “ but the 
ghosts have done with human habitations. It can matter very 
little to them who live in the rooms where they were once 
happy or miserable, as the case may be. Has your father ever 
heard anything of the old family?” 

“ Never. He says there are no Strangways left on this 
hemisphere. There may be a remnant of the race in Aus- 
tralia, he says, for he heard of a cousin of Eeginald Strang- 
way ’s who went out to Brisbane years ago to work with a sheep 
farmer on the Darling Downs. There is no one else of the old 
race and the old name that he can tell me about. I take a 
morbid interest in the subject, you know. If I were to meet 


26 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


a very evil-looking tramp in the woods, and he were to threaten 
me, I should suspect him of being a Strangway. They all 
must hate us. 

“With a very unreasonable hatred, then, Nita, for it was 
no fault of your father^s that the family went to the bad. I 
have heard my father talk of the Strangways many a time over 
his wine. They had been a reckless, improvident race for 
ever so many generations; men who lived only for the pleasure 
of the hour, whose motto was ‘ Carpe diem ’ in the worst sense 
of the words. There was a Strangway who was the fashion 
for a short time during the Eegency, wore a hat of his own in- 
vention, and got himself entangled with a popular actress, 
who sued him for breach of promise. He dipped the prop- 
erty. There was a racing Strangway, who kept a stable at 
Newmarket, and married — well — never mind how. He dipped 
the property. There was Georgiana Strangway, an heiress and 
a famous beauty, in the Sailor King^s reign. Two of the. royal 
dukes wanted to marry her; but she ran away with a band- 
master in the Blues. She used to ride in Hyde Park at nine 
every morning in a green cloth spencer trimmed with sable, at a 
time when very few women rode in London. Saw the band- 
master, fell over head and ears in love with him, and bolted. 
They were married at Gretna. He spent as much of her fort- 
une as he could get at, and was reported to have thrashed her 
before they parted. She set up a boarding-house at Ostend, 
gambled, drank cheap brandy, and died at five^nd-forty.-’^ 

“ What a dreadful ghost she would be to meet,^^ said Nita, 
with a shudder. 

“ From first to last they have been a bad lot,^^ concluded 
Sir Godfrey, “ and the Isle of Purbeck was a prodigious gainer 
when your father became master of Cheriton Chase and Baron 
Cheriton of Cheriton. 

“ That is what they must feel worst of all,^^ said Nita, 
speaking of the dead and the living as if they were one group 
of banished shades. “ It mub-t be hard for them to think that 
a stranger takes his title from the land that was once theirs, 
from the house in which they were born. Poor, ill-beliaved 
things, I canT help being sorry for them.^^ 

“ My fanciful Nita, they do not deserve your pity. They • 
made their own lives, love. They have only suffered the re- 
sult of their own Karjna. ” 

“ I only hope they will be better off in their next incarna- 
tions, and that they won’t get to that dreadful eighth world 
which leads nowhere. ” 

She made this light allusion to a creed which she and her 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


27 


lover had discussed seriously many a time in their graver 
moods. They had read Mr. Sinnett^s books together, and 
had given themselves up in some wise to the fascinating theo- 
ries of esoteric Buddhism, and had been struck with the curious 
parallel between that semi-fabulous reformer of the East and 
the Teacher and Redeemer in whom they both believed. 

They went about the house together, Nita admiring every- 
thing as if she were seeing those old rooms for the first time. 
The alterations to be made were of the smallest. Eita would 
allow scarcely any change. 

“ Whatever was nice enough for Lady Jane must be more 
than good enough for me,^^ she said, decisively, when Godfrey 
proposed improvements which would have changed the char- 
acter of his mother's morning-room; a conservatory, a large 
bay-window at the end, for instance. 

“ But it is such a shabby hole, compared with your room at 
Cheriton. " 

“It is a dear old hole, sir, and I won't have it altered in 
the smallest detail. I adore those old, deep-set windows and 
wide window-seats; and this apple-blossom chintz is simply de- 
licious. Faded, sir! What of that? One can't buy such pat- 
terns nowadays, for love or money. And that old Chinese 
screen must have belonged to a mandarin of the highest rank. 
My only feeling will be that 1 am a wretch in appropriating 
dear Lady Jane's surroundings. This room fitted her like a 
glove." 

“ She is charmed to surrender it to you, love; and your for- 
bearance in the matter of improvement will delight her." 

“ Your improvements would have been destruction. A 
conservatory opening out of that window would suggest a city 
man's drawing-room at Tulse Hill. I have seen such in my 
childhood when mother used to, visit odd people on the Surrey 
side of the river. " 

“ Loveliest insolence!" 

“ Oh, I am obliged to cultivate insolence. It is a farve- 
nue’s only defensive weapon. We new-mado people always 
give ourselves more airs than you who were born in the pur- 
ple." 

She roamed from room to room, expatiating upon every- 
thing with a child-like pleasure, delighted at the idea of this 
her new kingdom, over which she was to reign with undivided 
sovereignty. Cheriton was ever so much grander; but at 
Cheriton she had only been the daughter of the house, in- 
dulged in every fancy, yet in some wise in a state of subjeo- 


28 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


tion. Here she was to be sole mistress, with Godfrey for her 
obedient slave. 

‘‘ And now show me your rooms, sir,^^ she exclaimed, with 
pretty authority. “ 1 may wish to make some improvements 
there.’’ 

“ You shall work your will with them, dearest, as you have 
done with their master. 

He led her to his study and general den, a fine old room 
looking ino the stable-yard, capacious but gloomy. 

“ This is dreadful,^^ she cried, “ no view, and ever so far 
from me ! You must have the room next the morning-room, so 
that we can run in to each other, and talk, at any moment. 

“ That is one of the best bedrooms.-’^ 

“ What of that? We can do without superfluous bedrooms; 
but I can not do without you. This room of yours will make 
a visitor's bedroom. If he or she doesuT like it, he or she can 
go away, and leave us to ourselves, which we shall like eve', so 
much better, sha^n^t we? she asked, caressingly, as if life 
were going to be one long honey-moon. 

Of course he assented, kissed the red, frank lips, and assured 
her that for him bliss meant a perpetual duet. Yes, his study 
should be next her boudoir; so that even in his busiest hours 
he should be able to turn to her for gladness — refreshing him- 
self with her smiles after a troublesome interview with his 
bailiff — taking counsel with her about every change in his 
stable, sharing her interest in every new book. 

“ I will give orders about the change at once,^^ he said, “ so 
that everything may be ready for us when you are tired of 
Cheriton. 

They lunched gayly in the garden. Nita hated eating in- 
doors when the weather was good enough for an al-fresco meal. 
They lunched under a Spanish chestnut, that made a tent of 
foliage on the lawn in front., of the terrace. They lingered 
over the meal, full of talk, finding a new world of conversa- 
tion suggested by their surroundings; and then the grays were 
brought round to the hall door, and they started on the return 
journey. 

It began to rain before they reached Cheriton, and the after- 
noon clouded over with a look of premature winter. No 
saunterings on the terrace this evening; no midnight meander- 
ings among the cypresses and yews, the gleaming statues and, 
dense green walls; as if they had been Romeo and Juliet, wed- 
ded and happy, in the garden at Yexona. For the first time 
since the beginning of their honey-moon they were obliged to 
stay in-doors. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 29 

“It is positively chilly/^ exclaimed Juanita, as her maid 
carried off her damp mantle. 

“ My dearest love, I^m afraid youVe caught cold,^^ said 
Godfrey, with absolute alarm. 

“ Do I ever catch cold, Godfrey?^^ she cried, scornfully, 
and indeed her splendid physique seemed to negative the idea 
as she stood before him, tall and buoyant, with the carnation 
of health upon cheek and lips, her eyes sparkling, her head 
erect. 

“ Well, no, my Juno, I believe you are as free from all such 
weakness as human nature can be; but I shall order fires all 
the same, and I implore you to put on a warm gown. 

“ I will,^^ she answered, gayly. “You shall see me in my 
copper plush. 

“ Thanks, love. That is a vision to live for.^^ 

“ Shall w« have tea in my dressing-room — or in yours? 

“ In mine. I think we have taken tea in almost every 
other room in the house, as well as in every corner of the gar- 
den.^’ 

It had been one of her girlish caprices to devise new places 
for their afternoon tea. Whether it had been as keen a de- 
light to the footmen to carry Japanese tables and bamboo 
chairs from pillar to post was open to question; but Juanita 
loved to colonize, as she called it. 

“ I feel that wherever we establish our tea-pot we invest the 
spot with the sanctity of home,'’^ she said. 

Fires were ordered, and tea, in Sir Godfrey’s dressing-room. 

It was Lord Dalbrook’s dressing-roorii actually, and alto- 
gether a sacred chamber. It had been one of the best bed- 
rooms in the days of the Strang ways; but his lordship liked 
space, and had chosen this room for his own particular den — 
a fine old room, with full-length portraits of the Sir Joshua 
period let into the paneling. The furniture was of the plaiii- 
est and very different from the luxurious appointments of the 
other rooms, for these very chairs and tables, aud yonder sub- 
stantial mahogany desk, had done duty in James Dalbrook’s 
chambers in the Temple thirty years before. So had the heavy- 
looking clock on the chimney-piece, surmounted by a bronze 
Saturn leaning upon his scythe. ' So had the brass candle- 
sticks, the red morocco blotter, and the silver inkstand on the 
desk. He had fallen asleep in that capacious arm-chair many 
a time in the small hours, after struggling with the intricacies 
of a railway bill or poring over a volume of precedents. 

The thick Persian carpet, the velvet window curtains, pan- 
eled walls, and fine old fire-place gave a look of subdued 


30 


THE BAY WILL COME. 


Splendor to the room, in spite of the dark and heavy furniture. 
There was a large vase of roses on the desk, where Lord Cheri- 
ton never tolerated a flower; and there were more roses on the 
chimney-piece; and some smart bamboo chairs, many-colored 
like Joseph^’s coat, had been brought from Nita’s morning- 
room — and so, with logs blazing on the floriated iron dogs, and 
a scarlet tea-table set out with blue and gold china, and a 
Moorish copper kettle, the room had as gay an aspect as any 
one could desire. 

J uanita had changed her gown by the time the tea-table 
was ready, and came in from her room next door, a radiant 
figure in a gleaming, copper-colored gown, flowing loose from 
throat to foot, and with no adornment except a broad collar 
and cuffs of old Venice point. Her brilliant complexion and 
southern eyes and ebon hair triumphed over th^ vivid hue of 
the gown, and it was at her Sir Godfrey looked as she came 
beaming toward him, and not at the dress-maker’s achieve- 
ment. 

“ How do you like it?” she asked, with child-like pleasure 
in her fine raiment. ‘‘ I ought to have kept it till October, 
but I couldn’t resist putting it on, just to see what you think 
of it. I hope you won’t say it’s gaudy.” 

“ My dearest, you might be clad in a russet cloud for any- 
thing 1 should know to the contrary. A quarter of a century 
hence, when you are beginning to fancy yourself passee, we 
will talk about gowns. It will be of some consequence then 
how you dress. It can be none now. ” 

“ That is just a man’s ignorance, Godfrey,” she said, shak- 
ing her finger at him, as she seated herself in one of the bam- 
boo chairs before the tea-table, a dazzling figure, in the reflec- 
tion of the blazing logs, which danced about her eyes and hair 
and copper-colored gown in a bewildering manner. “ You 
think me handsome, I suppose?” 

“ Eminently so.” 

“ And you think I should be just as handsome if I dressed 
anyhow — in a badly fitting Tussore, for instance, made last 
year and cleaned this year, and with a hat of my own trim- 
ming, eh, Godfrey?” 

“ Every bit as handsome.” 

That shows what an ignoramus a university education can 
leave a man. My dearest boy, half my good looks depend 
i^pon my dress-maker. Not for worlds would I have you see 
me a dowdy, if only for one half hour. The disillusion might 
last a life-time. I dress to please you, remember, sir. It was 


THE DAY WILL COME. 31 

of you I thought when I was choosing my trousseau. I want 
to be lovely in your eyes always, always, always I’"’ 

“ You need make no effort to attain your wish. You have 
put so strong a spell upon me that with me at least you are 
independent of the dress-maker’s art. 

“ Again I say you don’t know what you are talking about. 
But, frankly now, do you think it too gaudy?” 

That coppery background to my Murillo Madonna? No, 
love, the color suits you to perfection. ” 

She poured out the tea, and then sunk back in her com- 
fortable chair, in a reverie, languid after her explorations at ^ 
the Priory, full of a dream-like happiness as she basked in the 
glow of the fire, welcome as a novel indulgence at this time of 
the year. 

“ There is nothing more delightful than a fire in July,” 
she said. 

Her eyes wandered idly about the room. 

“ Do you call them handsome?” she asked, presently. 

Godfrey looked puzzled. Was she still harping on the dress 
question, or was she challenging his admiration for those glori- 
ous eyes which he had been watching in their rovings for a 
lazy five minutes. 

“ I mean the Sfrangways. That is their famous beauty — 
the girl in the scanty white satin petticoat, with the goat. 
Imagine any one walking about a wood, with a goat, in white 
satin. What queer ideas portrait painters must have had in 
those days. She is very lovely, though, isn’t she?” 

“ She is not my ideal. 1 don’t admire that narrow, Cupid’s- 
bow mouth, the lips pinched up as if they were pronoimcing 
‘ prunes and prison. ’ The eyes are large and handsome, but 
too round, the complexion wax-dollish. No. she is not my 
ideal.” 

“ I should have been miserable if you had admired her.” 

“ There is a face in the hall which I like ever so much bet- 
ter, and yet I doubt if it is a good face.” 

Which is that?” 

“ The face of the girl in that group of John Strangway ’s 
three children.” 

That girl with the tousled hair and bright blue eyes? 
Yes, she must have been handsome — ^but she looks — I hope 
you won’t be shocked, but I really can’t help saying it — that 
girl looks a devil.” 

“Poor soul! Her temper did not do much good for her. 

I believe she came to a melancholy end.” 

“ How was that?” 


32 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“^he eloped from a school in Switzerland, with an officer 
in a line regiment, a love-match, but she went wrong a few 
years afterward, left her husband, and died in poverty, at 
Boulogne, I believe. 

“Another ghost, exclaimed Juanita, dolefully. “Poor, 
lost soul, she ynust walk. I can^t help feeling sorry for her — 
married to a man who was unkind to her, perhaps, and whom 
she discovered unworthy of her love. And then years after- 
ward meeting some one worthier and better, whom she loved 
passionately. That is dreadful! Oh, Godfrey, if 1 had been 
married before 1 saw you — and we had met — and you had cared 
for me — God knows what kind of woman I should have been! 
Perhaps I should have been one of those poor souls who have 
a history, the women mother and her friends stare at and 
whisper about in the park. Why are people so keenly inter- 
ested in them, I wonder? Why canT they leave them alone?^^ 

“ It would be charity to do so."’^ 

“ No one is charitable — in London. 

“ Do you think the country is more indulgent 

“ I suppose not. I^’m afraid English people keep all their 
charity for the Continent. I shall never look at the girl in 
that group without thinking of her sad story. She looks 
hardly fifteen in the picture. Poor thing! She did not know 
what was coming. 

They loitered over their tea-table, making the most of their 
happiness. The sweetness of their dual life had not begun to 
pall. It was still new and wonderful to be together thus, un- 
restrained by any other preseace. 

In the midst of their gp;y talk Juanita ^s eyejN wandered to 
the bronze Time upon the chimney-pieoe, and the familiar fig- 
ure suggested gloomy ideas. 

“ Oh, Godfrey, look at' that grim old man with his scythe, 
mowing down our happy moments so fast that we can hardly 
taste their sweetness before they speed away. To think that 
our lives are hurrying past us like a torrent, and that we shall 
be like him,^' pointing distastefully to the type of old age — 
the wrinkled brow and flowing beard— “ before we know that 
we have lived. ' 

“ It is a pity, sweet, that life should be so short. 

Her glance wandered higher to the dark oak panel above 
the clock, and she started up from her low chair with a faint 
scream, stood on tiptoe before the fire-place, snatched half a 
dozen scraggy peacock's feathers from the panel, and threw 
them at her husband's feet. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


33 




‘^Look at those/^ she exclaimed, pointing to them as they 
lay there. 

“ Peacock’s feathers. What have they done that you should 
use them so?” 

“ Oh, Godfrey, don’t you know?” she asked, earnestly. 

‘‘ Don’t 1 know what?” 

‘‘ That peacock’s feathers bring ill-luck. It is fatal to take 
them into a house. They are an evil omen. And father will 
pick them up when he is strolling about the lawn, and will 
bring them in-doors; though I am always scolding him for his 
obstinate folly, and always throwing the horrid things away.” 

“ And this kind of thing has been going on for some years, 
I suppose?” asked Godfrey, smiling at her intensity. 

“ Ever since 1 can remember.” , 

“ And have the peacock’s feathers brought you misfort- 
une?” 

She looked at him gravely for a few moments, and then 
burst into a joyous laugh. 

“ No, no, no, no,” she said, “Pate has been overkind to 
me. I have never known sorrow. Fate has given me you, 
I am the happiest woman in the world — for there can’t be 
another you, and you are mine. It is like owning the Koh-i- 
noor diamond; one knows that one stands alone. Still, all the 
same, peacock’s feathers are unlucky, and I will not suffer 
them in your room.” 

She picked up the offending feathers, twisted them into a 
ball, and flung them at the back of the deep old chimney, be- 
hind the smoldering logs; and then she produced a chess-board, 
and she and Godfrey began a game with the board on their 
knees, and played for an hour by fire-light. 


CHAPTER III. 

“ A deadly silence step by step increased, 

Until it seemed a horrid presence there.” 

That idea of the Strangways had taken hold of the bride’s 
fancy. She went into the hall with Godfrey after dinner, and 
they looked together at the family group. The picture was a 
bishop’s half-length, turned lengthwise, and the figures 
showed only the head and shoulder^ The girl stood between 
the two boys, her left arm round heV younger brother’s neck. 
He was a lad of eleven or twelve, in A i Eton jacket and broad 
white collar. The other boy was oldW than the girl, and was 
dressed in dark-green corduroy. The heads were masterly, 
but the picture was uninteresting. 


84 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


• .-6 


“ Did you ever see three faces with so little fascination 
among the three?'/ asked Godfrey; “ the boys look arrant 
cubs; the girl has the makings of a handsome woman, but the 
lines of her mouth and chin have firmness enough for forty, 
and yet she could hardly be over fifteen when that picture was 
painted. " 

She has a lovely throat and lovely shoulders." 

“ Yes, the painter has made the most of those." 

“ And she has fine eyes." 

“ Fine as to color and shape, but as cold as a Toledo blade 
— and as dangerous. I pity her husband. " 

“ That must be a waste of pity. If he had been good to 
her she would not ha^e run away from him." 

‘‘I am not sure of that. A woman with that mouth and 
chin would go her own gait if she trampled upon bleeding 
hearts. I wonder your father keeps these shadows of a van- 
ished race." 

“ He would not part with them for worlds. They are like 
the peacock's feathers that he loill bring in-doors. I some- 
times think he has a fancy' for unlucky things. He says that, 
as we have no ancestors of our own — to speak of — I suppose 
we must have ancestors, for everybody must have come down 
from Adam somehow." 

“ Natural!}’', or from Adam's ancestor, the common pro- 
genitor of the Darwinian thesis." 

“ Don’t be horrid. Father’s idea is that, as we have no an- 
cestors of our own, we may as well keep the Strangway por- 
traits. The faces are the-i history of the house, father said, 
when mother wanted those dismal old pictures taken down to 
make way for a collection of moderji art. So there they are, 
and I can't help thinking that they overlook us." 

They were still standing before the trio of young faces, con- 
templatively. 

“ Are they all dead?" asked Juanita, after a pause. 

“ God knows. I believe it is a long time since any of them 
was heard of. Jasper talks to me about them sometimes. 
He was in service here, you know, before he became my fa- 
ther's bailiff. In fact, he only left Cheriton after the old 
squire's death, //e is fond of talking of the forgotten race, 
and it is from him that most of my information is derived. 
He told me about that unlucky lad," pointing to the younger 
boy. “He was in the navy, distinguished himself out in 
China, and was on the high-road to getting a ship when he 
got broke for drunkenness— a flagrant case, which all but 
ended in a tremendous disaster and the burning of a man-of- 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


35 


war. Hd went into the merchant service — did well for a year 
or two, and then the old enemy took hold of him again, and 
he got broke there. After that he dropped through — disap- 
peared in the great dismal swamp where the men who fail in 
this world sink out of knowledge.^' 

“ And the elder boy; what became of him?^^ 

“ He was in the army — a tremendous swell, I believe, mar- 
ried Lord Dangerfield^’s youngest daughter and cut a dash for 
two or three years, and then disaj)peared from society, and 
took his wife to Corsica, on the ground of delicate health. 
For anything I know to the contrary they may still be living 
in that free-and-easy little island. He w^as fond of sport and 
liked a rough life. I fancy that Ajaccio would suit him better 
than Purbeck or Pall Mall.^^ 

“ Poor things! 1 wonder if they ever long for Oheriton?^^ 

“ If old Jasper is to be believed, they were passionately fond 
of the place, especially that girl. Jasper was groom in those 
days, and he taught her to ride. She was a regular dare- 
devil, according to his account, with a temper that no one had 
ever been able to control. But she seems to have behaved 
pretty well to Jasper, and he was attached to her. Her father 
couldn’t manage her anyhow. They were too much alike. 
He sent her to a school at Lausanne soon after that picture 
was painted, and she never came back to Cheriton. She ran 
away with an English officer who was home from India on 
furlough, and was staying at Ouchy for his health. She repre- 
sented herself as of full age, and contrived to get married at 
Geneva. The squire refused ever to see her or her husband. 
She ran away from the husband afterward, as I told you. In 
fact, to quote Jasper, she was an incorrigible bolter.” 

“Poor, poor thing! It is all too sad,” sighed Juanita. 
“ Let us go into the library and forget them. There are no 
Strangways there, thank Heaven. ” 

She put her arm through Godfrey’s and led him off, unre- 
sisting. He was in that stage of devotion in which he followed 
her like a dog. 

The library was one of the best rooms in the house, but the 
least interesting from an archaeologist’s point of view. It 
had been built early in the eighteenth century for a ball-room, 
a long, narrow room, with five tall windows, and it had been 
afterward known as the music-room, but James Dalbrook had 
improved it out of its original character by throwing out a 
large bay, with' three windows opening on to a semicircular 
terrace, with marble balustrade and steps leading down to the 
prettiest portion of that Italian garden which was the crowning 


S 8 


THE HAT WILE COME. 


glory of Cheriton Manor, and which it had been Lord Cheri- 
t oil’s delight to improve. The spacious bay gave width and 
dignity to the room, and it was in the space between the bay 
and the wide ‘fire-place that people naturally grouped them- 
selves. It was too large a room to be warmed by one fire of 
ordinary dimensions, but the fire-place added by Dalbrook was 
of abnormal width and grandeur, while the chfmney-piece was 
rich in colored marbles and splendid sculpture. The room 
was lined with books from fioor to ceiling. Clusters of wax- 
candles were burning on the mantel-piece, and two large 
moderator lamps stood on a massive carved oak table in the 
center of the room — a table spacious enough to hold all the 
magazines, reviews, and periodicals in three languages that 
were worth reading — Quarterlies, “ Revue des Deux Mondes,” 
“Rundschau,” “Figaro,” “ World,” “Saturday,” “Truth,” 
and the rest of them — as well as guide-books, peerages, clergy 
and army lists — which made a fm’midable range in the middle. 
Godfrey flung himself into a luxurious chair, and Juanita 
perched herself lightly beside him on the cushioned arm, look- 
ing down at him from that point of vantage. There was a 
wood fire here as well as in the hall; but the rain was over 
now, the evening had grown warmer, and the French windows 
in the bay stood open to the dull gray night. 

“ What are you reading now, Godfrey?” asked Juanita, 
glancing at the cozy double table in a corner by the 'chimney- 
piece, loaded with books above and below. 

“ For duty readying Jones’s book on Grattan and the Irish 
Parliament; for old books Plato; for new ‘ Wider Horizons.’ ” 

He was an insatiable reader, and even in those long summer 
days of honey-moon talk he had felt the need o^ books, which 
were a habit of his life. 

“ Is ‘ Wider Horizons ’ a good book?” 

“ It is full of imagination, and it carries one away; but one 
has the same feeling as in ‘ Esoteric Buddhism. ’ It is a very 
comforting theory, and it ought to be true; but by what au- 
thority is this gospel preached to us, and on what evidence are 
we to believe?” 

“ ‘ Wider Horizons ’ is about the life to come?” 

“ Yes; it gives us a very vivid picture of our existence in 
other planets. The author writes as if he had been there.” 

“ And according to his theory you and I are to meet and be 
happy again in some distant star?” 

“ 111 many stars — climbing from star to star, and achieving 
a higher spirituality, a finer essence, with every new existence, 
until we attain the everlasting perfection. ” 


tTHE DAY WILL COME. 87 

“ And we who are to die old and worn out hero are to be 
young and bright again there— in our next world 

“ Naturally. 

And then we shall grow old again — go through the same 
slow decay— gray hairs, fading sight, duller hearing."' 

“Yes; as we blossom so must we fade. The withered 
husk of the old life holds the seed from which the new flower 
must spring; and with every incarnation the flower is to gain 
in vigor and beauty, and the life period is to lengthen till it 
touches infinity. " 

“ I must read the book, Godfrey. It may be all a dream; 
but I love even dreams that promise a future in which you 
and I shall always be together — as we are now, as we are 
now." 

She repeated those last four words with infinite tenderness. 
The beautiful head sunk down to nestle upon his shoulder, 
and they were silent for some minutes in a dreamy reverie, 
gazing into the fire, where the logs had given .out their last 
flame, and were slowly fading from red to gray. 

It was a quarter to eleven by the dial let into the marble of 
the chimney-piece. The butler had brought a tray with wine 
and water at ten o'clock and had taken the final orders before 
retiring. J uanita and her husband were alone amid the still- 
ness of the sleeping household. The night was close and dull, 
not a leaf stirring, and only a few dim stars in the heavy sky. 

As the clock told the third quarter, with a small silvery 
chime, as it were a town clock in fairy-land, Juanita started 
suddenly from her half-reclining position, and listened intent- 
ly, with her face toward the open window. 

“ A footstep!" she exclaimed. “ I heard a footstep on the 
terrace." 

“ My dearest, I know your hearing is quicker than mine; 
but this time it is your fancy that heard and not your ears. 
I heard nothing. And who should be walking on the terrace 
at such an hour, do you suppose?" 

“ 1 don't suppose anything about it, but I know there was 
some one. I heard the steps, Godfrey. I heard them as dis- 
tinctly as I heard you speak just now, light footsteps — slow, 
very slow, and with that cautious, treacherous sound which 
light, slow footsteps always have, if one hears them in the 
silence of night. " 

“ You are very positive." 

“ I know it, 1 heard it!" she cried, running to the window, 
and out into the gray night. 

She ran along the whole length of the terrace and back 


38 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


again, her husband following her, and they found no one, 
heard nothing, from one end to the other. 

‘‘ You see, love, there was no one there/^ said Godfrey. 

“ I see nothing of the kind — only that the some one who 
was there has vanished very cleverly. An eavesdropper might 
hide easily enough behind anyone, of those cypresses,’^ she 
said, pointing to the obelisk-shaped trees which showed black 
against the dim gray of the night. 

‘‘ Why should there be any eavesdropper, love? What 
secrets have you and 1 that any prowler should watch or listen. 
The only person of the prowling kind to be apprehended would 
be a burglar; and as Cheriton has been burglar-free all these 
years, I see no reason for fear; so, unless your mysterious foot- 
fall belonged to one of the servants or a servant's follower, 
which is highly improbable on this side of the house, I take it 
that you must have heard a ghost. 

He had his arm around her, and was leading her out of the 
misty night into the warm, bright room, and his voice had the 
light sound of laughter; but, at that word ghost, she started 
and trembled, and her voice was very serious, as she answered: 

“ A ghost, yes! It was just like the footfall of a ghost — so 
slow, so soft, so mysterious. I believe it was a ghost, Godfrey 
—a Straugway ghost. Some of them must visit this house. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“ Who will dare 

To pluck thee from me? And of thine pwn will, 

Full well I feel thou wouldst not leave me.” 

The sunshine of a summer morning streaming in through 
mullioned windows that looked due south, raised Juanita’s 
spirits, and dispersed her fears. It was impossible to feel de- 
pressed under such a sky. She had been wakeful for a con- 
siderable part of the night, brooding upon that ghostly foot- 
step which had sent such a sudden chill to her warm young 
heart, but that broad, clear light of morning brought com- 
mon sense. 

“ I dare say it was only some love-sick house- maid, roaming 
about after all the others had gone to bed, in order to have a 
quiet think about her sweetheart, and what he said to her last 
Sunday as they went home from church. I know how I used 
to walk about with no company but my thoughts of you, God- 
frey, and how sweet it used to be to go over all your dearest 
words — over and over again — and no doubt the heart of a 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


39 


house-maid is worked by just the same machinery that set 
mine going — and her thoughts would follow the same track. 

That is what we are taught to believe, dearest, in this en- 
lightened age. 

“ Why should it be a ghost pursued Juanita, leaning back 
in her bamboo chair, and lazily enjoying the summer morn- 
ing, somewhat languid after a sleepless night. 

They were breakfasting at the western end of the terrace, 
with an awning over their heads, and a couple of footmen 
traveling to and from the house in attendance upon them, and 
keeping respectfully out of earshot between whiles. The table 
was heaped with roses, and the waxen chalices of a great mag- 
nolia on the lower level showed above the marble balustrade, 
and shed an almost overpowering perfume on the warm air. 

“ Why should a ghost come now?"’’’ she asked, harping upon 
her morbid fancies. ‘‘ There has never been a hint of a ghost 
in all the years that father and mother have lived here. Why 
should one come now, unless — 

“ Unless what, love?^^ 

“ Unless one of the Strangways died last night — at the Very 
moment when we heard the footfall — died in some distant land, 
perhaps, and with his last dying thought visited the place of 
his birth. One has heard of such things.'’^ 

One has heard of a great many strange things. The hu- 
man imagination is very inventive.'’^ 

“ Ah, you are a skeptic, 1 know. I donT think I actually 
believe in ghosts — but 1 am afraid of being forced to believe in 
them. Oh, Godfrey, if it were meant for a warning,^' she 
cried, \^th sudden terror in the large dark eyes. 

“ What kind of warning?'’^ 

“ A presage of misfortune — sickness — death. 1 have read 
so many stories of such warnings.’^ 

“ My dearest love, you have read too much rubbish in that 
line. Your mind is full of morbid fancies. If the morning 
were not too warm, I should say put on your habit and let us 
go for a long ride. I am afraid this sauntering life of ours is 
too depressing for you. 

“ Depressing— to be with you all day! Oh, Godfrey, you 
must be tired of me if you can suggest such a thing. 

“But, my Nita, when I see you giving yourself up to 
gloomy speculations about ghosts and omens— 

“ Oh, that means nothing. When one has a very precious 
treasure one must needs be full of fears. Look at misers, 
how nervous they are about their hidden gold. And my treas- 


40 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


ure is more to me than all the gold of Ophir — ^infinitely pre- 
cious. 

She sprung up from her low chair, and leaned over the back 
of his to kiss the broad brow which was lifted up to meet those 
clinging lips. 

“ Oh, my love, my love, I never knew what fear meant till 
I knew the fear of parting from you,^^ she replied. 

“ Put on your habit, iNita. We will go for a ride in spite 
of the sun. Or what do you say to driving to Dorchester, and 
storming your cousins for a lanch? I want to talk to Mr. 
Dalbrook about Skinner’s bill of dilapidations.” 

Her mood changed in an instant. 

“ That would be capital fun,” she cried. I wonder if it 
is a breach of etiquette to lunch with one’s cousins during 
one’s honey-moon. 

A fig for etiquette. Thomas, order the phaeton for half 
past eleven.” 

“ What a happy idea,” said Juanita, “ a long, long drive 
with, you, and then the fun of seeing how you get on with my 
strong-minded cousins. They pretend to despise everything 
that other girls care for, don’t you know — and go in for litera- 
ture, science, politics, everything intellectual, in short—^and I 
have seen them sit and nurse Darwin or Buckle for a whole 
evening, while they have talked of gowns and bonnets and 
oilier girls’ flirtations.” . 

“ Then they are not such Roman maidens as they affe -v to 

be. ” -I 

“ Far from it. They will take the pattern of my frock with 
their eyes before I have been in the room ten minutes. Just 
watch them.” 

“ I will; if I can take my eyes ofi you.” 

Juanita ran away to change her white peignoir for a walk- 
ing-dress, and reappeared in half an hour, radiant and ready 
for the drive. 

“ How do you like my frock?” she asked, posing herself in 
front of her husband, and challenging admiration. 

The frock was old-gold Indian silk, soft and dull, made 
with an exquisite simplicity, of long, flowing draperies, above 
a kilted petticoat, which just showed the neat little tan shoes 
and a glimpse of tan silk stocking. The bodice fitted the 
tall, supple figure like a glove; the sleeves were loose and 
short, tied carelessly at the elbow with a broad satin ribbon, 
and the long Suede gloves matched the gown to the nicest 
shade. Her hat was Leghorn, broad enough to shade her eyes 
from the sun, high enough to add to her importance, and 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


41 


caught up on one side with a bunch of dull yellow barley and 
a few cornflowers, whose vivid hue was repeated in a cluster 
of the same flowers embroidered on one side of the bodice. 
Her large sunshade was of the same silk as her gown, and that 
was also embroidered with cornflowers, a stray blossom flung 
here and there with an accidental air. 

“ My love, you look as if you had stepped out of a fashion- 
book. 

“I suppose I am too smart, said Juanita, with an im- 
patient sigh; “ and yet my coloring is very subdued. There 
IS only that touch of blue in the cornflowers — just the one high 
light in the picture. That is the one drawback to country 
life. Everything really pretty seems too smart for dusty 
roads and green lanes. One' must be content to grope one’s 
obscure way in a tailor gown or a cotton frock all the year 
round. Now this would be perfection for a Wednesday in 
H}'de Park, wouldn’t it?” 

“ My darling, it is charming. Why should you not be 
prettily dressed under this blue summer sky? You can sport 
your tailor gowns in winter. You are not a whit too smart for 
me, Nita. You are only too lovely. Bring your d ust cloak, 
and you may defy the perils of the road. ’' 

Celestine, Lady Carmichael’s French-Swiss maid, was in at- 
tendance with the dust cloak, an ample wrap of pale ecru silk 
and lace, cloud-like, indescribable. This muffled the pretty 
gown from top to toe, and Nita took her seat in the phaeton, 
and prepared for a longer drive and a longer talk than they 
had had yesterday. 

She was pleased at the idea of showing oft her handsome 
young husband and her new frock to those advanced young 
ladies, who had affected a kind of superiority on the ground of 
what she called “heavy reading,” and what they called 
advanced views. Janet and Sophia had accepted Lady Gheri- 
ton’s invitations with inward protest, and in their apprehen- 
sion of being patronized had somewhat inclined to give them- 
selves airs, taking pains to impress upon their cousin that she 
was as empty-headed as she was beautiful, and that they 
inhabited an intellectual plane for which she had no scaling- 
ladder. She had put up with such small snubbings in the 
sweetest way, knowing all the time that, as the Hon. Juanita 
Dalbrook of Cheriton Chase, and one of the delutantes whose 
praises had been sung in all the society papers, she inhabited a 
social plane as far beyond their reach as their intellectual plane 
might be above hers. 

“ I don’t suppose we shall see Theodore,” said Juanita, as 


42 


THE DAY WILL OOiJE. 


the bays bowled merrily along the level road. The grays were 
getting a rest after yesterday’s work, and these were Lady 
Cheriton’s famous barouche horses, to whom the phaeton 
seemed as a toy. “ He must have gone to Heidelberg before 
now.” 

“He must be fond of Heidelberg, to be running off there 
when it is so jolly at home. ” 

“ He was there for a year, you know, before he went to 
Cambridge, and he is always going back there or to the Hartz 
for his holidays. I sometimes tell him he is half a German.” 

She rather hoped that Theodore w^as in Germany by this 
time; and yet she had assured herself in her own mind that 
there could be no pain to him, in their meeting. She knew 
that he had loved her — that in one rash hour, after a year’s 
absence in America, when he had not known, or had chosen 
to forget, the state of affairs between her and Godfrey, he had 
told her of his love, and had asked her to give him hope, dt 
was before her engagement, but she was not the less frank in 
confessing her attachment to Godfrey. “ I can never care for 
any one else,” she said; “ I have loved him all my life.” 

All her life! Yes, that was Theodore’s irreparable loss. 
While he, the working-man, had been grinding out his days 
in the tread-mill round of a country solicitor’s office, the young 
patrician had been as free as the butterflies in Juanita’s rose 
garden; free to woo her all day long, free to share her most 
trifling pleasures and sympathize with her lightest pains. 
What chance had the junior partner in Halbrook & Son against 
Sir Godfrey Carmichael of Starham Priory? 

Theodore had managed his life so well after that one bitter re- 
buff that J uanita had a right to suppose that his wound had 
healed, and that the pain of that hour had been forgotten. She 
was sincerely attached to him, as a kinsman, and respected him 
more than any other young man of her acquaintance. Had 
not Lord Cheriton, that admirable judge of character, de- 
clared that Theodore was one of the cleverest men he knew, 
and only regretted that he had not attached himself to the 
higher branch of the law, as the more likely in his case to re- 
sult in wealth and fame? ' 

The phaeton drove up to the old Hanoverian door-way as 
St. Peter’s clock chimed the quarter after one. The old man- 
servant looked surprised at this brilliant vision of a beautiful 
girl, a fine pair of horses, a smart groom, and Sir Godfrey 
Carmichael. The tout ensemhU was almost bewildering, even 
to a man accustomed to see the various conveyances of neigh- 
boring land-owners at his master’s door. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


43 


Yes, my lady, both the young ladies are at home,^^ said 
Brown, and led the way upstairs with unshaken dignity. 

He had lived in tliat house five-and-thirty years, beginning 
as shoe-black and errand boy, and he was proud to hear his 
master tell his friends how he had risen from the ranks. He 
had indulged in some mild philanderings with pretty parlor- 
maids in the days of his youth, but had never seriously en- 
tangled himself, and was a confirmed bachelor and something 
of a misogynist. He was a pattern of honesty and conscien- 
tiousness, having no wife and family to be maintained upon 
broken victuals and illuminated^ with filched candle-ends or 
stolen oil. He had not single interest outside his master^s 
house, hardly so much as a thought; and the glory and honor 
of “ the family were his honor and glory. So as he ushered 
Lady Carmichael and her husband to the drawing-room he 
was meditating upon what additions to the luncheon he could 
suggest to cook, which might render that meal worthy of such 
distinguished guests. 

Sophia was seated by one of the windows painting an orchid 
in a tall Venetian vase. It was a weakness with these clever 
girls to think they could do everything. They were not con- 
tent with Darwin and the new learning, but they painted in- 
differently in oils and in water-colors, played on various instru- 
ments, sung in three languages, and fancied themselves 
invincible at lawn-tennis. 

The orchid was top-heavy, and had been tumbling out of 
the vase every five minutes in a manner that had been very 
trying to the artistes temper and irritating to Janet, who was 
grappling with a volume of Johann Muller, in the original, 
and losing herself in a labyrinth of words beginning with ver 
and ending with heit. 

They both started up from occupations of which both wore 
tired, and welcomed their visitors with a show of genuine 
pleasure; for, although they had both been very determined 
in their resistance to anything like patronage on Juanita's part 
when she was Miss Dalbrook, they w'ere glad that she should 
be prompt to recognize the claims of kindred now that she 
was Lady Carmichael. , 

How good of you to come!'^ exclaimed Janet; 1 didn't 
think you would remember us at such a time." 

“Did you think I must forget old friends because lam 
happy?" said Juanita. “ But I mustn't take credit for other 
people's virtues. It was Godfrey who proposed driving over 
to see you." ^ , 

“ I wanted to show you what a nice couple we make, saiu 


44 


THE DAY WILL COMB. 


Sir Godfrey, gayly, drawing his bride closer to him, as they 
stood side by side, tall and straight, and glowing with youth 
and gladness in the middle of the grave old drawing-room. 
“ You young ladies were not so cousinly as your brother Theo- 
dore. You didnT drive to Cheriton to welcome us home.^^ 

“ If Theo had told us what he was going to do we should 
have been very glad to be there too,’^ replied Sophy, “ but he 
rode off in the morning without saying a word to anybody."’^ 

‘‘ He is in Germany by this time, I suppose?” said Juanita. 
“ He is down-stairs in the office. His portmanteau has beeii 
packed for a week, I believe,'’^ explained Janet, “but there is 
always some fresh business to prevent his starting. My father 
relies upon him more every day.'’^ 

“ Dear, good Theodore, he is quite the cleverest man I 
know,” said Juanita, without the slightest idea of disparaging 
her husband, whom she considered perfection. “ I think he 
must be very much like what my father was at his age. ” 

“ People who are in a position to know tell us that he is 
exactly what his oion father was at that age,” said Janet, re- 
senting this attempt to trace her brother's gifts to a more dis- 
tant source. “I donT see why one need go further. My 
father would not have been trusted as he has been for the last 
thirty years if he were a simpleton; and Galton observes — ” 
The door opened at this moment, and Theodore came in. 

He greeted his cousin and his cousin’s husband with unaffect- 
ed friendliness. 

“It is against my principles to take luncheon,” he said, 
laughingly, as he gave Juanita his hand, “ but this is a red- 
letter day. My father is waiting for us in the dining-room.” 

They all went down-stairs together, Theodore leading the 
way with his cousin, talking gayly as they went down the wide 
oak staircase, between sober paneled walls of darkest brown. 
The front part of the ground-floor was given up to offices, and 
the dining-room was built out at the back, a large, bright- 
looking room with a bay window, opening on to a square town 
garden, a garden of about half an acre, surrounded with high 
walls, above which showed the tree-tops in one of the leafy 
walks that skirt the town, and an irregular mass of roofs, with 
a steeple here and there. It was very different to that Italian 
garden at Cheriton, where the peacocks strutted slowly be- 
tween long rows of obelisk-shaped cypresses, where the Italian 
statues showed white in every angle of the dense green wall, 
and where the fountain rose and fell with a silvery cadence in 
the still summer atmosj^here. Here there was only a square 
iawn^ Just big enough for a tennis court, and a broad border 


THE DAY WILL C031B. 


45 


of hardy flowers, with one especial portion at the end of the 
garden, where Sophia experimented in cross-fertilization after 
the manner of Darwin, seeming forever upon the threshold of 
valuable discoveries. 

Mr. Dalbrook was a fine-looking man of some unascertained 
age between fifty and sixty. He boasted that he was Lord 
Oheriton^s junior by a year or two, although they had both 
come to a time of life when a year or two more or less could 
matter very little. 

He was very fond of J uanita, and he welcomed her with 
especial tenderness in her new character as a bride. He kissed 
her, and then held her away from him for a minute, with a 
kindly scrutiny. 

“ Lady Godfrey surpasses Miss Dalbrook,^^ he said, smiling 
at the girLs radiant face. “ 1 suppose now you are going to 
be the leading personage incur part of the county. We quiet 
townspeople will be continually hearing of you, and there will 
not be a local paper without a notice of your doings. Any- 
how, I am glad you don’t forget old friends. ” 

He placed her beside him at the large oval table, on which 
the handsomest plate and the oldest china had been set forth 
with the celerity which testified to Brown’s devotion. Mr. 
Dalbrook was one of those sensible people who never waste 
keep or wages upon a bad horse or a bad servant, and his cook 
was one of the best in Dorchester; so the luncheon, albeit 
plain and unpretentious, was a meal of which no man need feel 
ashamed, and the additions which had been made to the menu 
since the phaeton drove up to the door were not of a kind to 
betray their hasty concoction. 

Juanita was fond of her uncle, as she called this distant 
cousin of hers, to distinguish him from the younger generation, 
and she was pleased to be sitting by him, and hearing all the 
news of the county town, and the county people who were his 
clients and in many cases his friends. It maybe that his 
cousinship with Lord Cheriton Had gone as far as his profes- 
sional acumen to elevate him in the esteem of town and 
county, and that some people who would hardly have invited 
the county solicitor for his own sake sent their cards as a mat- 
ter of course to the law lord’s cousin. But there were others 
who esteemed the provincial solicitor for his own sterling quali- 
ties, and who even liked him better than the somewhat severe 
and self-assertive Baron Cheriton. 

While Juanita talked confidentially to her kinsman, and 
while Sir Godfrey discussed the latest theory about the sun, 
and the probable endurance of our own little planet^ with 


46 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


Janet and Sophia, Theodore sat at the bottom of the table, 
silent and thoughtful, watching the lovely, animated face with 
its look of radiant happiness, and telling himself that the 
woman he loved was as far away from him sitting there, within 
reach of his touch, within the sound of his lowest whisper, as 
if she had been in another world. He had borne himself 
bravely on her wedding-day, had smiled back her happy smile 
and clasped her hand with the steady grip of friendship; but, 
that effort made, there had been a sad relapse in his fortitude, 
and he had thought of her ever since as a man thinks of that 
supreme possession without which life is worthless — as the 
miser thinks of his stolen gold — or the ambitious man of his 
blighted name. 

Yes, lie had loved her with all the strength of his heart and 
mind, and he knew that he could never again love with the 
same full measure. He was too wise a man, and too experi- 
enced in life, to tell himself that for him time could have no 
healing power — that no other woman could ever be dear to 
him; but he told himself that another love like unto this was 
impossible, and that all the future could bring him would be 
some pale, faint copy of this radiant picture. 

‘‘I suppose it’s only one man in fifty who marries his first 
love,” he thought, and then he looked at Godfrey Carmichael 
and thought that to him overmuch had been given. He was a. 
fine young fellow, clever, unassuming, with a frank, good 
face; a man who was liked by men -as well as by women; but 
what had he done to be worthy of such a wife as Juanita? He 
could only answer the question in the words of Figaro, “ He 
had taken the trouble to be born.” 

That one thoughtful guest made no difference in the gayety 
of the luncheon-table. Matthew Dalbrook had plenty to say 
to his beautiful cousin, and Juanita had all the experiences of 
the last season to talk about, while, once having started upon 
Sir William Thompson and the ultimate exhaustion of the 
sun’s heat, the sisters were not likely to stop. 


CHAPTER V. 

Poor little life that toddles half an hour, 

Crowned with a flower or two, and there an end—” 

Sir Godfrey’s device for diverting his wife’s mind from 
the morbid fancies of the previous night answered admirably. 
She left Dorchester in high spirits, after having invited her 
cousins to Cheriton for tennis and lunch on the following day, 
and after having bade an affectionate good-bye to Theodore, 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


47 


who was to start on his holidays directly he could make an end 
of some important business now in hand. His father told him 
laughingly that he might have gone a week earlier had he 
really wanted to go. 

“ I believe there must be some attraction for you in Dor- 
chester, though I am not clever enough to find out what it is/^ 
said Mr. Dalbrook, innocently, “for you have been talking 
about going away for the last fortnight, and yet you don't 
go." 

Lady Carmichael had lingered in the homely old house till 
afternoon tea, had lingered over her tea, telling her cousins all 
they wanted to know about smart society in London, that one 
central spot of bright, white light in the dull, gray mass of a 
busy, commonplace world, which ^ she knew so well and of 
which they knew so little. Janet and Sophia professed to be 
above caring for these things, except from a purely philosoph- 
ical point of view, as they cared for ants, bees, and wasps; but 
they listened eagerly all the same, with occasional expressions 
of wonder that human beings could be so trivial. 

“ Five hundred pounds spent in flowers at Lady Drumlock^s 
ball," cried Sophy, “ and to think that in a few more million 
years the sun may be as cold as the north pole, and what trace 
will there be then of all this butterfly world .^" 

“ Did the Mountains cut a tremendous dash this season?" 
asked Janet, frivolously curious about their immediate neigh- 
bors, county people who went to London for the season. “ Of 
course you know she had thirty thousand pounds left her by 
an uncle quite lately. And she is so utterly without brains that 
I dare say she will spend it* all in entertainments." 

“ Oh, they did entertain a good deal, and they did their 
best, poor things, and people went to them," Juanita an- 
swered, with a deprecating air; “ but still I should hardly like 
to say that they are in societjr. In the first place she has never 
succeeded in getting the prince at any of her dances; and in 
the next place her parties have a cloud of provincial dullness 
upon them against which it is in vain to struggle. He can 
never forget his constituents and his duty to his borough, and 
that kind of thing does not answer, if one wants to give really 
nice parties. I'm afraid her legacy won't do her much good, 
poor soul, unless she gets some clever person to show her how 
to spend it. There is a kind of society-instinct, don't you 
know, and she is without it. 1 believe the. people who give 
good parties are born, not made — like poets and orators." 

Sir Godfrey looked down at her, smiling at her juvenile 


48 


THE DAY WILL COMB. 


arrogance, which, to his mind, was more bewitching than an- 
other woman^s humility. 

“We mean to show them the way, next year, if we take a 
house in town,^^ he said. 

“ But we are not going to have a house in town,^’ answered 
Juanita, quickly. “Why, Godfrey, you know I have done 
with all that kind of frivolity., We can go to Victoria Street 
in May, and stay with our people there just long enough to 
see all the pictures, and hear some good music, and just rub 
shoulders with the friends we like at half a dozen parties, and 
then we will go back to our nest at the Priory. l)o you think 
that I am like Lady Mountain, and want to waste my life 
upon the society struggle, when I have you 

It was nearly six o^clock when they left Comhill. It was 
more than half past seven when they drew near Cheriton, and 
the sun was setting behind the irregular line of hills toward 
Studland. They approached the manor by one of the most 
picturesque lanes in the district, a lane sunk between high 
banks, rugged and rocky, and with here and there the massive 
trunk of beech or oak jutting out above the road- way, while 
the gnarled and twisted roots spread over the rough, shelving 
ground, and seemed to hold up the meadow-land upon the 
higher level; a dark, secret-looking lane it must have seemed 
on a moonless night, sunk so deeply between those earth- 
walls, and overshadowed by those gigantic trunks and interlac- 
ing branches; but in this mellow evening light it was a place 
in which to linger. There was a right of way through Cheri- 
ton Chase, and this sunk lane was the favorite approach. A 
broad carriage drive crossed the chase and park, skirted the 
great elm avenue that led to the house, and swept round by a 
wide semicircle to the great iron gates which opened on the 
high-road from Wareham. 

The steep gable ends of an old English cottage rose amid 
the trees, on the upper ground just outside the gate at the end 
of the lane. It was a veritable old English cottage, and had 
been standing at that corner of the park-like meadow for more 
than two hundred years, and had knowni but little change dur- 
ing those two centuries. It was a good deal larger than the 
generality of lodges, and it differed from other lodges in so 
much as it stood outside the gate instead of inside, and on a 
higher level than the road; but it was a lodge all the same, 
and tlie duty of the person who lived in it was to open the gate 
of Cheriton Chase to all comers, provided they came in such 
vehicles as were privileged to enjoy the right of way. There 
“Was a line drawn somewhere; perhaps at coal wagons or trades- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


49 


men^s carts; but for the generality of vehicles the carriage 
road across Cheriton Chase was free. 

A rosy-faced girl of about sixteen came tripping down the 
stone steps built into the bank as the carriage approached, 
and was courtesying at the open gate in time for Sir Godfrey 
to drive through without slackening the pace. He gave her a 
friendly nod as he passed. 

“ Does Mrs. Porter never condescend to open the gate her- 
self?’^ he asked Juanita. 

“ Seldom for any one except my father. I think she makes 
a point of doing it for him, though I believe he would much 
rather she didn't. You mustn't sneer at her, Godfrey. She 
is a very unassuming person, and very grateful for her com- 
fortable position here, though she has known better days, poor 
soul." 

“ That is always such a vague expression. What were the 
better days like?" 

“ She is the widow of a captain — in the mercantile marine, 
I think it is called — a man who was almost a gentleman. She 
was left very poor, and my father, who knew her husband, 
gave her the lodge to take care of, and a tiny, tiny pension — 
not so much as 1 spend upon gloves, I'm afraid; and she has 
lived here contentedly and gratefully for the last ten years. It 
must be a sadly dull life, for she is an intellectual woman, too 
refined to associate with upper servants and village tradespeo- 
ple; so she has no one to talk to — literally no one — except 
when the vicar or any of us call upon her. But that is not 
the worst, poor thing," pursued Juanita, dropping her voice 
to a subdued and sorrowful tone, “ she had a great trouble 
some years ago. You remember, don't you, Godfrey?" 

“ 1 blush to say that Mrs. Porter's trouble has escaped my 
memory." 

“ Oh, you have been so much away; you would hardly hear, 
perhaps. She had an only daughter — her only child indeed — 
a very handsome girl, whom she adored; and the girl went 
wrong somehow, and disappeared. 1 never heard the circum- 
stances. 1 was not supposed to know, but I know she van- 
ished suddenly, and that there was a good deal of fuss with 
mother and the servants and the vicar; and Mrs. Porter's hair 
began to whiten from that time, and people who had not 
cared much for her before were so sorry that they grew quite 
foird of her." 

“It is a common story enough," said Godfrey; “what 
could a handsome girl do — except go wrong — in such a life as 
that? Did she open the gate while she was here?" 


50 


THE DAT WILL C03IE. 


‘‘ Only for my father, I believe. Mrs. Porter has always 
contrived to keep a girl in a pinafore, like that girl you saw 
just now. All the girls come from the same family, or have 
done for the last six or seven years. As soon as the girl grows 
out of pinafores she goes oif to some better service, and a 
younger sister drops into her place. 

“ And her pinafores, I suppose.-’^ 

“ Mrs. Porter’s girls always do well. She Las a reputation 
for making a good servant out of the raw material.” 

“ A clever woman, no doubt; very clever, to have secured a 
lodge-keeper’s berth without being obliged to open the gate; a 
woman who knows how to take care of herself.” 

“ You ought not to disparage her, Godfrey. The poor 
thing has known so much trouble — think of what it was to lose 
the daughter she loved — and in such a way — worse than 
death.” 

“ 1 don’t know about that. Death means the end. A lov- 
ing mother might rather keep the sinner than lose the saint, 
and the sinner may wash herself clean and become a saint — 
after the order of Mary Magdalen. If this Mrs. Porter had 
been really devoted to her daughter she would have followed 
her and brought her back to the fold. She would not be here, 
leading a life of genteel idleness in that picturesque old cot- 
tage, while the lost sheep is still astray in the wilderness. ” 

“ You are very hard upon her, Godfrey.” 

“ I am hard upon all shams and pretenses. I have not 
spoken to Mrs. Porter above half a dozen times in my life — 
she never opens the gate for me, you know — but I have a fixed 
impression that she is a hypocrite — a harmless hypocrite, per- 
haps — one of those women whose chief object in life is to stand 
well with the vicar of her parish.” 

They were at the hall door by this time, and it was a quar- 
ter to eight. 

‘‘ Let us sit in the drawing-room this evening, Godfrey,” 
said Juanita, as she ran o2 to dress for dinner. “ The library 
would give me the horrors after last night. ” 

“ My capricious one! You will be tired of the drawing- 
room to-morrow. I should not be surprised if you ordered me 
to sit on the house-top. We might rig up a tent for afternoon 
tea between two chimney stacks. ” 

J uanita made a rapid toilet, and appeared in one of her 
graceful cream-white tea-gowns, veiled in a cloud of softest 
lace, just as the clocks were striking eight. She was all gayetj 
tq-night, just as she had been all morbid apprehensioji last 
night; and when they went to the drawing-room after dinner 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


51 


— together, for it was not to be supposed that Sir Godfrey 
would linger over a solitary glass of claret — she flew to the 
grand piano and began to play Tito Mattei^s famous waltz, 
which seemed the most consummate expression of joyousness 
possible to her. The brilliant music filled the atmosphere with 
gayety, while the face of the player, turned to her husband as 
she played, harmonized with the light-hearted melody. 

The drawing-room was as frivolously pretty as the library was 
soberly grand. It was Lady Cheriton^s taste which had ruled 
here, and the room was a kind of record of her ladyship's 
travels. She had bought pretty things or curious things wher- 
ever they took her fancy, and had brought them home to her 
Oheriton drawing-room. Thus the walls were hung with 
Algerian embroideries on damask or satin and decorated with 
Rhodian pottery. The furniture was a mixture of old French 
and old Italian. The Dresden tea services and ivory statuettes, 
and capo di monte vases, and Copenhagen figures had been 
picked up all over the Continent, without any regard to their 
combined effect; but there were so many things that the ulti- 
mate result was delightful, the room being spacious enough to 
hold everything without the slightest appearance of overcrowd • 
ing. 

The piano stood in a central position and was draped with a 
Japanese robe of state — a mass of rainbow-hued embroidery 
on a ground of violet satin almost covered with gold thread. 
It was the most gorgeous fabric Godfrey Carmichael had ever 
seen, and it made the piano a spot of vivid, party-colored light, 
amid the more subdued coloring of the room — the silvery 
silken curtains, the delicate Indian muslin draperies^ and the 
dull, tawny plush coverings of sofas and chairs. 

The room was lighted only by clusters of wax-candles, and 
a reading-lamp on a small table near one of the windows. 
It was a rule that, wherever Sir Godfrey spent his evening, 
there must always be a reading- table and lamp ready for him. 

He showed lio eagerness for his books yet awhile, but seemed 
completely happy lolling at full length on a sofa near the 
piano, listening and watching as J uanita played. She played 
mor^of Mattel's brilliant music — another waltz — an arrange- 
ment of ‘‘ Non e Ver " — and then began one of Chopin's 
wildest mazurkas, which she played with an audacious self- 
abandonment that was almost genius. 

Godfrey listened rapturously, delighted with the music for 
its own sake, but even more delighted for the gladness which 
it expressed. 

She stopped at last, breathless, after Mendelssohn's “ Ca- 


52 


THE HAT WILL COME. 


priccio. ** Godfrey had risen from the sofa and was standing 
by her side. 

“ Pm afraid I must have tired you to death/^ she said, 
“bufc 1 had a strange sort of feeling that 1 must go on play- 
ing. That music was a safety-valve for my high spirits.'’^ 

“ My darling, I am so glad to see that you have done with 
imaginary woes. We may have real troubles of some kind to 
face by and by, perhaps, as we go down the hill, so it would 
be very foolish to abandon ourselves to fancied sorrows while 
we are on the top.-’-^ 

“ Real troubles — yes — sickness, anxiety, the fear of part- 
ing, said Juanita, in a troubled voice. “ Oh, Godfrey, if we 
were to give half our fortune to the poor — ^if we were to 
make some great sacrifice — do you think God would spare us 
such pangs as these — the fear — the horrible fear of being 
parted from each other. 

My dearest, we can not make a bargain with Providence. 
We can only do our duty and hope for the best.^^ 

“ At any rate, let us be very — very good to the poor,'^ urged 
Juanita, with intense earnestness; ‘‘ let us have their prayers 
at least.-’/ 

The night was warm and still, and the windows were all 
open to the terrace. Godfrey and Juanita took tlieir coffee in 
their favorite corner by the magnolia-tree, and sat there for a 
long time in the soft light of the stars, talking the old sweet 
talk of their future. 

“We must drive to Swanage and see Lady Jane to-mor- 
row,’^ said Juanita, by and by. “ Don’t you think it was 
very wrong to go to see my people — only cousins after all — 
before we went to your mother?” 

“ She will come to us, dear, directly we give her permission. 
I know she is dying to see you in your new character.” 

“ How lovely she looked at the wedding, in her pale-gray 
gown and bonnet. I love her almost as well as 1 love my own 
dear, good, indulgent mother, and I think she is the most per- 
fect lady I ever mek” 

“ I don’t think you’ll find her very much like the typical 
mother-in-law, at any rate,” replied Godfrey, gayly. 

They decided on driving to Swanage next morning. They 
would go in the landau and bring “ the mother ” back with 
them for a day or two, if she could be persuaded to come. 

J uanita stifled a yawn presently, and seemed somewhat lan- 
"guid after her sleepless night and long day of talk and vivacity. 

“ I am getting very stupid company,” she said, “ I’ll go to 
bed early to-night, Godfrey, and leave you an hour’s quiet 


THE DAY WILL COME. 53 

with ‘ Wider Horizons.^ I know you are longing to go on with 
that book, but your chatter-box wife won^t let you.'’^ 

Of course he protested that her society was worth more than 
all the books in the British Museum. He offered to take his 
book up to her room and read her to sleep, if she liked; but 
she would not have it so. 

You shall have your own quiet corner and your books, 
just as if you were still a bachelor,’^ she said, caressingly, as 
she hung upon his shoulder for a good-night kiss. “ As for 
me, 1 am utterly tired out. Janet and Sophy talked me to 
death, and then there was the long drive home. 1 shall be as 
fresh as ever to-morrow morning, and ready to be off to dear 
Lady Jane. 

He went into the hall with her, and to the top of the stairs 
for the privilege of carrying her candlestick, and he only deft 
her at the end of the corridor out of which her room opened. 

She did not ring for her maid, preferring solitude to that 
young personas attendance. She did not want to be worried 
with elaborate hair-brushing or ceremonies of any kind. She 
was thoroughly exhausted with the alternations of emotion of 
which her life had been made up of late, and she fell asleep 
almost as soon as her head touched her pillow. 

The bedroom* was over the drawing-room. Her last look 
from the open casement had shown her the reflection of the 
lights below on the terrace. She was near enough to have 
spoken out of the window to her husband, had she been so 
minded. She could picture him sitting at the table at the 
corner window, in his thoughtful attitude, head bent over his 
book, one knee drawn up nearly to his chin, one arm hanging 
loosely across the arm of his low easy-c^ir; She had watched 
him thus many a time, completely absorbed in his book. 

She slept as tranquilly as an infant, and her dream-wander- 
ings were all in pleasant places; with him, always with him; 
confused, after the manner of all dreams, but with no sign of 
trouble. 

What was this dream about being with him at Woolwich, 
where they were firing a big gun — a curious dream? She had 
been there once with her father to see a gun drawn — but she 
had never seen one fired there— and now in her dream she 
stood in a crowd of strange faces, fronting the river, and there 
was a long, gray ironclad on the water — a turret ship — and 
there came a flash, and then a puff of white smoke, and the 
report of a gun, short and sharp, not like the roar of a can- 
non by any means, and yet her dream showed her the dark, 


64 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


sullen gun on the gray deck, the biggest cannon she had ever 
seen. 

She started up from her pillow cold and trembling. ^ That 
report of the gun had seemed so real and so near that it had 
awakened lier. She was wide awake now, and pushed back 
her loose hair from her eyes, and felt under her pillow for her 
watch, and looked at it in the dim light of the night-lamp on 
the table by her bed. 

“ A quarter to one.'’^ 

She had left the drawing-room a few minutes after ten. It 
was long for Godfrey to have sat reading alone; but he was 
insatiable when he had a new book that interested him. 

She got up and put on her slippers and dressing-gown, pre- 
pared to take him to task for his late hours. She was not 
alarmed by her dream, but the sound of that sharp leport was 
still in her ears as she lighted her candle and went down into 
the silent house. 

She opened the drawing-room door, and looked across to the 
spot where she expected to see her husband sitting. His chair 
was empty. The lamp was burning just as she had left it 
hours ago, burning with a steady light under the green porce- 
lain shade, but he was not there. 

Puzzled, and with a touch of fear, she went slowly across 
the room toward his chair. He had strayed 6ut on to the ter- 
race perhaps — he had gone out for a final smoke. She would 
steal after him in her long white gown and frighten him if she 
could, 

“ He ought at least to take me for a ghost, she thought. 

She stopped, transfixed with a sudden horror. He was lying 
on the carpet at her feet in a huddled heap, just as he had 
rolled out of his chair. His head was bent forward between 
his shoulders; his face was hidden. She tried to lift his head, 
hanging over him, calling to him in passionate entreaty; and, 
behold! her hands and arms were drowned in blood. His 
blood splashed her white peignoir. It was all over her. She 
seemed to be steeped in it, as she sat on the floor trying to get 
a look at his face — to see if his wound was mortal. 

For some moments she had no other thought than to sit 
there in her horror, repeating his name in every accent of ter- 
ror and of love, beseeching him to answer her. Then gradu- 
ally came the conviction of his unconsciousness and of the need 
of help. He was badly hurt — dangerously hurt — but it might 
not be mortal. Help must be got. He must be cured some- 
how. She could not believe that he was to die. 

She rushed to the bell and rang, again and again and again, 


THE HA'S WILL COME. 


65 


hardly taking her finger from the little ivory knob, listening 
as the shrill electric peal vibrated through the silent house. 
It seemed an age before there was any response, and then 
three servants came hurrying in — the butler and one of the 
footmen and a scared house-maid. They saw her standing 
there tall and white, dabbled with blood. 

“ Some one has been trying to murder him,^^ she cried. 
“ Didn’t you hear a gun 

No, no one had heard anything till they heard the bell. 
The two men lifted Sir Godfrey from the floor to the sofa, 
and did all they could do to stanch that deadly wound in his 
neck, from which the blood was still pouring — a bullet wound. 
Lambert, the butler, was afraid that the bullet had pierced 
the Jugular vein. 

If there was life still it was only ebbing life. Juanita flung 
herself on the ground beside that prostrate form and kissed 
the unconscious lips and the cold brow and those pallid cheeks; 
kissed and cried over him, and repeated again and again that 
the wound w'as not mortal. 

“ Is any one going for the doctor?” she cried, frantically. 
“ Are you all going to stand still and see him die?” 

Lambert assured her that Thomas was gone to the stable to 
wake the men, and dispatch a mounted messenger for Mr. 
Dolby, the family doctor. 

He might have helped us more if he had run there him- 
self!” cried Juanita. “ There will be time lost in waking 
the men and sj^ddling a horse. I could go there faster. ” 

She looked at the door as if she had half resolved to rush off 
to the village in her dressing-gown and slippers. And then 
she looked again at that marble face, and again fell upon her 
knees by the sofa, and laid her cheek against his bloodless 
one, and moaned and cried over him; while the butler went 
to get brandy, with but little hope in his own mind of any 
useful result. 

“ What an end to a honey-moon!” he said to himself, de- 
spondently. 


CHAPTER VI. 

Is not short payne well borne that hringes long ease, 

And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave? 

Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, 

Ease after wane, death after life . . 

The morning dawned upon a weeping household. All was 
over before Mr. Dolby, the village surgeon, could be brought 


66 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


to Cheriton House. He would only examine the death-wound 
and express his opinion as to its character. 

“ It was certainly not self-inflicted/^ he told the servants, 
as they stood about him in a stony group. 

‘‘ Self-inflicted, indeed echoed Lambert, “ 1 should think 
not. If ever there was a young man who had cause to set 
store by his life it was Sir Godfrey Carmichael. It’s murder, 
Mr. Dolby, rank murder.” 

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s murder,” said Dolby, with an air 
which implied that suicide would have been a bagatelle in com- 
parison. 

“ But who can have done it, and why?’^ he asked, after a 
pause. 

The servants inclined to the opinion that it was the act of a 
poacher. Lord Cheriton had always been what they called a 
mark upon poachers; and there was doubtless,a vendetta to 
which the pheasant-snaring fraternity had pledged themselves, 
and Sir Godfrey was the victim of that malignant feeling, 
however strange it might appear that hatred of Lord Cheriton 
should find its expression in the murder of Lord Cheriton’s 
son-in-law. 

“ We must wait for the inquest before wo can know any- 
thing,” said Dolby, when he had done all that surgery could 
do for that cold clay which was to compose the lifeless form in 
its final rest in a spare bedroom at the end of the corridor re- 
mote from that bridal chamber where Juanita was lying pros- 
trate and motionless in her dumb despair. 

The local policeman was on the scene at^ seven o’clock, 
prowling about the house with a countenance of solemn 
stolidity, and asking questions which seemed to have very lit- 
tle direct bearing on the case, and taking measurements be- 
tween the spot where the murdered man had been found, too 
plainly marked by the pool of blood which had soaked into 
the velvet pile, and imaginary points upon the terrace outside, 
with the doctor at his elbow to make suggestions, and as far 
as in him lay behaving as a skilled Loudon detective might 
have behaved under the same circumstances, which conduct 
on his part did not prevent Mr. Dolby telegraphing to Scot- 
land Yard as soon as the wires were at his disposal. 

He was in the village post-office when the clock struck 
eight, and the postmistress, who had hung out a flag and dec- 
orated her shop-front with garlands on the wedding-day, was 
watching him with an awe-stricken countenance as he wrote 
his telegrams. 

The first was to Scotland Yard: 


THE DAT WILL COME. C7 

Sir Godfrey Carmichael murdered late last night. Send 
one of your most trustworthy men to investigate.^^ 

The second was to Lord Cheriton, Grand Hotel, Param6, 
St. Malo, France: 

% 

“ Sir Godfrey Carmichael was murdered last night, between 
twelve and one o^clock. Murderer unknown. Death instan- 
taneous. Pray come immediately. 

The third was to Matthew Dalbrook, more briefly announc- 
ing the murder. 

He was going to send a fourth message to Lady Jane Car- 
michael, began to write her address, then thought better of it, 
and tore up the form. 

I’ll drive over, and break it to her,’’ he said to himself. 
** Poor soul, it will break her heart, let her learn it how she 
may. But it would be cruel to telegraph, all the same.” 

Every one at Cheriton knew that Lady Jane’s affections 
were centered upon her only son. She had daughters, and 
she was very fond of them. They were both married and 
had married well; but their homes lay far off, one in the Mid- 
lands, the other in the north of England, and aUhough in 
one case there was a nursery full of grandchildren, neither the 
young married women nor the babies had ever filled Lady 
Jane’s heart as her son had filled it. 

And now Mr. Dolby had taken upon himself to go and tell 
this gentle widow that the light of her life was extinguished; 
that the son she adored had been brutally and inexplicably 
murdered. It was a hard thing for any man to do; and Mr. 
Dolby was a warm-hearted man, with home ties of his own. 

Before Mr. Dolby’s gig was half-way to Swanage, his tele- 
gram had been delivered at Dorchester, avid Matthew Dalbrook 
and his son were starting for Cheriton with a pair of horses in 
the solicitor’s neat T-cart, which was usually driven with one. 
Theodore drove, and father and son sat side by side in a dreary 
silence. 

What could be said? The telegram told so little. They 
had speculated and wondered about it in brief, broken sen- 
tences as they stood in the roomy oflBce fronting the sunny 
street, waiting for the carriage. They had asked each other 
if this ghastly thing could be; if it were not some mad meta- 
morphose of words, some blunder of a telegraph clerk’s, rather 
than a horrible reality. 

Murdered— a man who had been sitting at their table, full 
of life and spirits, in the glow of youth and health and happi- 


58 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


ness, less than twenty-four hours ago. Murdered — a man who 
had never known what it was to have an enemy, who had been 
popular with all classes. Had been! How awful to think of 
him as belonging to the past, he who yesterday looked forward 
to so radiant a future. And Theodore Dalbrook had envied 
him, as even the most generous of men must needs envy the 
winner in the race for love. 

Could it be? Or, if it were really true, how could it be? 
What manner of murderer? What motive for the murder? 
Where had it happened? On the high-way — in the woody 
labyrinths of the chase? And upon the mind of Theodore 
flashed the same idea which had suggested itself to the serv- 
ants. It might be the Work of a poacher whom Sir Godfrey 
had surprised during a late ranible. Yet a poacher must be 
hard bested before he resorts to murder, and Sir Godfrey — 
easy-tempered and generous — was hardly the kind of man to 
take upon himself the functions of a gamekeeper, and give 
chase to any casual depredator. It was useless to wonder or 
to argue while the facts of the case were all unrevealed. It 
would be time to do that when they were at Cheriton. So 
the father and son sat in a dismal silence, save that now and 
again the elder man sighed, ‘‘ Poor Juanita, my poor Juanita; 
and she was so happy yesterday. 

Theodore winced at the words. Yes, she had been so hap- 
py, and he had despaired because of her happiness. The cup 
of gladness which had brimmed over for her had been to him 
a fountain of bitterness. It seemed to him as if he had never 
realized how fondly he loved her till he saw her by her hus- 
band’s side, an embodiment of life’s sunshine, innocently re- 
vealing her happiness in every look and word. It was so long 
since he had ceased to hope. He had even taught himself to 
think he was resigned to his fate, that he could live his life 
without her. But that delusion ceased yesterday, and he knew 
that she was dearer than she had ever been to him, now that 
she was irrevocably lost. It was human nature, perhaps, to 
love her best when love was most hopeless. 

They drove along the level road toward Wareham, in the 
dewy freshness of the summer morning, by meadow and copse, 
by heath and corn-field, the skylarks caroling in the hot blue 
sky, the corn-crake creaking inside the hedge, the chaffinch 
reiterating his monotonous note, the jay screaming in the 
wood, all living creatures reveling in the cloudless summer. 
It was hard, awful, un supportable, that he who was with them 
yesterday, who had driven along this road under the westering 
sun, was now cold clay, a subject for the coroner, a something 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


59 


to be hidden away in the family vault and forgotten as soon as 
possible; for what does consolation mean except persuasion to 
forget. 

Never had the way between Wareham and Cheriton Chase 
looked lovelier than - in this morning atmosphere; never had 
the cattle grouped themselves into more delightful pictures 
amid those shallow waters which reflected the sky; never had 
the lights and shadows been fairer upon those level meadows 
and yonder broken hills. Theodore Dalbrook loved every bit 
of that familiar landscape; and even to-day, amid the horror 
and wonder of his distracted thoughts, he had a dim sense of 
surrounding beauty, as of something seen in a dream. He 
could have hardly told where he was, or what the season was, 
or whether it was the morning or the evening light that was 
gilding the fields yonder. 

The lowered blinds at Cheriton told only too surely that the 
ghastly announcement in the telegram was no clerical error, 
and the face of the footman who opened the door was pale 
with distress or terror. He conducted Mr. Dalbrook and his 
son to the library, where the butler appeared almost immedi- 
ately to answer the elder man^s eager questions. 

Not on the high-way, not in the woods or the park, but in 
the drawing-room where the butler had seen him sitting in a 
low arm-chair by the open window, in the tranquil summer 
night, absorbed in his book. 

“ He was that wrapped up that I don-’t believe he knew I 
was in the room, sir,'^ said Lambert, “ till I asked him if 
there was anything further wanted for the night, and then he 
starts, looks up at me with his pleasant smile, and answers, 
in his quiet, friendly way, ‘ Nothing more, thank you, Lam- 
bert. Is it very late^ 1 told him it was past eleven, and I 
asked if I should shut the drawing-room shutters before I went 
to bed, but he says ‘ No, I’ll see to that — I like the windows 
open,’ and then he went on reading, and less than two hours 
afterward he was lying on the ground, in front of the window, 
dead.” 

“ Have you any suspicion, Lambert, as to the murderer?” 

“ Well, no, sir; not unless it was a poacher or an escaped 
lunatic.” 

“ The lunatic seems rather the more probable conjecture,” 
said Matthew Dalbrook. “ The police are at work already, 1 
hope. ” 

“ Well, sir, yes; our local police are doing all that lies in 
their power, and 1 have done what I could to assist them. Mr. 


60 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


Dolby wired to Scotland Yard at the same time as he wired to 
yon/^ 

“ That was wisely done. Have there been no traces of the 
murderer discovered? No indication of any kind?^^ 

“ Nothing, sir; but one of the under-house-maids remembers 
to have beard footsteps about on the terrace after dark, on 
several occasions within the last fortnight, once while Sir God- 
frey and our j^oung lady were at dinner, and two or three 
times at a later hour, when they were in the drawing-room or 
the library. 

“ Did she see any one?'^‘ 

“ No, sir; she is rather a dull kind of girl, and never so 
much as troubled to find out what the footsteps meant. Her 
bedroom is one of the old attics on the south side of the house, 
and she was sitting at work near her open window when she 
heard the footsteps— going and coming — slow and stealthy 
like — upon the terrace at intervals. She is sure they were not 
her ladyship’s nor Sir Godfrey’s steps on either occasion. She 
says she knows their walk, and she would swear to these foot- 
steps as altogether different. Slower, more creeping-like, as 
she puts it.” 

“ Has no one been seen lurking about after dark?” 

‘‘No one, sir, as we have heard of, and the constable ques- 
tioned all the servants pretty close, I can tell you. He hasn’t 
left much for the London detective to do.” 

Matthew Dalbrook had been the only questioner in this in- 
terrogatory. Theodore had sunk into a chair on entering the 
room, and sat silent, with a face of marble. He was thinking 
of the stricken girl whose life had been desolated by this mys- 
terious crime. His father had not forgotten her; but he had 
wanted, first of all, to learn all he could about her husband’s 
death. 

“ How does Lady Carmichael bear it?” he asked, presently. 

“ Very sadly, sir, very sadly. Mrs. Morley and Celestine 
are both with her. Mr. Dolby ordered that she should be kept 
as quiet as possible, not allowed to leave her room if they 
could help it, but it has been very difficult to keep her quiet. 
Poor, dear young lady! She wanted to go to 7«m.” 

“ Poor girl! poor girl! So happy yesterday!” said Matthew 
Dalbrook. 

His son sat silent, as if he were made of stone. 

Far, very far off, as it were at the end of a long, dark vista, 
cut sharply across an impenetrable wood of choking thorns 
and blinding briers, he saw Juanita, again radiant, again hap- 
py, again loving and beloved, and on the threshold of another 


THE DAY WILL COME. 61 

life. The vision dazzled him almost to blindness. But could 
it ever be? Could that loving heart ever forget this agony of 
to-day? — ever beat again to a joyful measure? He wrenched 
himself from that selfish reverie; he felt a wretch for having 
yielded up his imagination, even for a moment, to that su- 
pernal vision. He was here to mourn with her, here to pity 
her — to sympathize with this unspeakable grief. Murdered! 
Her lover-husband shot to death by an unknown hand; her 
honey-moon ended with one murderous flash — that honey-moon 
which had seemed the prelude to a life-time of love. 

“1 should like to see her,^^ said Mr. Dalbrook. “ I think 
it would be a comfort to her to see me, however agitated she 
may be. Will you take my name to the housekeeper and ask 
her opinion?^ ^ 

Lambert looked doubtful as to the wisdom of the course, 
but was ready to obey all the same. 

“Mr. Dolby said she was to be kept very quiet, sir — that 
she wasn^t to see anybody.’’^ 

“ That would hardly apply to her own people. Mr. Dolby 
telegraphed for me. 

“ Did he, sir? Then I conclude*he would not object to her 
ladyship seeing you. 1^11 send up your name. Perhaps, while 
the message is being taken, you would like to have a look at 
the spot where it happened?^’ 

“ Yes. I want to know all that can be known. 

Lambert had been so busy with the constable all the morn- 
ing that he felt himself almost on a Itsvel with Scotland Yard 
talent, and he took a morbid interest in that dark stain on the 
delicate half-tints of the velvet pile and in such few details as 
he was able to expound. He dispatched a footman upstairs, 
and he led the Dalbrooks to the drawing-room, where he 
opened the shutters of that open window through which the 
assassin must have aimed, and let a flood of sunshine into the 
darkened room. 

The chair, the table, and lamp stood exactly as they had 
stood last night. Lambert took credit to himself for not hav- 
ing allowed them to be moved by so much as an inch. 

“ Any assistance in my power I shall be only too happy to 
give to the London detective,^ ^ he said. “ Of course, coming 
on the scene as a total stranger, he can^t be expected to do 
much without help.^^ 

There was no need to point out that ghastly stain upon the 
carpet. The shaft of noonday sunshine seemed to concentrate 
its brightness on that grisly patch, dark, dark, dark with the 


62 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


witness of a cruel murder — the murder of a man who had 
never done an unkindly , act or harbored an unworthy thought. 

Theodore Dalbrook stood looking at that stain, white as 
death. It seemed to bring the fatal reality nearer to him. 
He looked at the low, luxurious chair, with its covering of pea- 
cock plush and its Turkish embroidery draped daintily across 
the broad, high back and capacious arms — a chair to live in — 
a sybarite’s estate — and then at the satin wood book-table, filled 
with such books as the lounger loves — Southey’s “ Doctor, ’ 
Burton, Table Talk,” by Coleridge, Whately, Rogers, 
“ The Sentimental Journey,” Rochefoucauld, “ Caxtoniaiia,” 
“ Elia,” and thrown carelessly upon one of the shelves a hand- 
kerchief of cobweb cambric, with a monster monogram, that 
occupied a third of the fabric, “ J. D.” Her handkerchief, 
dropped there last night, as she arranged the books for her 
husband’s use — putting her own favorites in his way. 

Lambert took up a book and opened it with a dismal smile, 
handing it to Mr. Dalbrook as he did so. 

It was “ Wider Horizons,” the volume he had been reading 
when the bullet struck hiiQ, and those open pages were spat- 
tered with his blood. 

“ Put it away, for God’s sake, man,” cried Dalbrook, hor- 
rified; “ whatever you do, don’t let Lady Carmichael see it.” 

“No, sir, better not, perhaps, sir — but it’s evidence, and it 
ought to be produced at the inquest.” 

“ Produce it, if you like; but there is evidence enough to 
show that he was murdered in this spot.” 

“ As he sat reading, sir; the book is a great point.” 

And then Lambert expounded the position of that lifeless 
form, making much of every detail, as he had done to the con- 
stable. 

"While he was talking the door was opened suddenly, and 
Juanita rushed into the room. 

“ Lord have mercy on us, she mustn’t see that,” cried Lam- 
bert, pointing to the carpet. 

Matthew Dalbrook hurried forward to meet her, and caught 
her in his arms before she could reach that fatal spot. He 
held her there, looking at her with pitying eyes, while Theo- 
dore approached slowly, silently, agonized by the sight of her 
agony. The change from the joyous self-abandonment of yes- 
terday to the rigid horror of to-day was the most appalling 
transformation that Theodore Dalbrook had overlooked upon. 
Her face was of a livid pallor, her large, dark eyes were dis- 
tended and fixed, and all their brilliancy was quenched like a 
light blown out. Her blanched lips trembled as she tried to 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


63 


speak, and it was after several futile eifforts to express her 
meaning that she finally succeeded in shaping a sentence dis- 
tinctly. 

‘‘ Have’ they found his murderer?^’ 

“Not yet, dearest. It is far too soon to hope for that. 
But it is not for you to think about that, Juanita. All will 
be done — be sure of that; rest secure in the devotion of those 
who love you; aiid'^ — with a break in his voice, “ who loved 

She lifted her head quickly, with an angry light in the eyes 
which had been so dull till that moment. 

“ Do you think 1 will leave that work to others?’^ she said. 
“It is my business. It is all that God has left me to do in 
this world. It is my business to see that his murderer suffers 
— not as I suffer — that can never be — but all that the law can 
do — the law which is so merciful to murderers nowadays. You 
don^’t think he can get off lightly, do you, uncle? They will 
hang him, wonT they? Hang him — hang him — hang him!^^ 
she repeated, slowly, in hoarse, dull syllables. “ A few mo- 
ments’ agony after the night of terror. So little — so little! 
And I have to live my desolate life. My punishment is for a 
life-time.” 

“ My love, God will be good to you. He can lighten all 
burdens,” murmured Mr. Dalbrook, gently. 

“ He can not lighten mine, not by the weight of a single 
hair. He has stretched forth His hand against me in hatred 
and anger, perhaps because I loved His creature better than I 
loved Him. ” 

“ My dearest, this is madness — ” 

“ I did, I did,” she reiterated. “ I loved my husband bet- 
ter than I loved my God. I would have worshiped Satan if I 
could have saved him by Satan’s help. I loved him with all 
my heart and mind and strength;^ as we are taught to love 
God. There was not room in my heart for any other religion. 
He was the beginning and the end of my creed. And God 
sfiw my happy love and hated me for it. He is a jealous God. 
We are taught that when we are little children. He is a jeal- 
ous God, and He put it into the head of some distracted creat- 
u!*e to come to that window and shoot my husband.” 

A violent fit of hysteria followed these wild words. Matthew 
Dalbrook felt that all attempts at reasoning or consolation 
must n(3od8 be vain for some time to come. Until this tem- 
pest of grief was calmed nothing could be done. 

“ She will have her mother here in a day or two,” said 
Theodore. “ That may bring some comfort, ” 


64 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


Juanita heard him, even in the midst of her hysterical sob- 
bing. Her hearing was abnormally keen. 

‘‘No one, no one can comfort me, unless they can give me 
back my dead. 

She started up suddenly from the sofa where Matthew had 
placed her, and grasped his arm with convulsive force. 

“ Take me to him,"" she entreated, “ take me to him, uncle. 
You were always kind to me. They won"t let me go to him. 
It is brutal; it is infamous of them. I have a right to be 
there."" 

“ By and by, my dear girl, when you are calmer."" 

“ I will be calm this instant, if you will take me to him,"" 
she said, commanding herself at once, with a tremendous effort, 
choking down those rising sobs, clasping her convulsed throat, 
with constraining hands, tightening her tremulous lips.^ 

“ See,"" she said, “ I am tranquil now. I will not give way 
again. Take me to him. Let me see him — that I may be 
sure my happy life, was not all a dream — a mad woman"s 
dream — as it seems to have been now, when I can not look 
upon his face."" 

Mr. Holbrook looked at his son interrogatively. 

“ Let her see him,"" said Theodore, gently. “ We can not 
lessen her sorrow. It must have its way. Better perhaps that 
she should see him and accustom herself to her grief; better 
for her brain, however it may torture her heart."" 

He saw the risk of a further calamity in his cousin"s state — 
the fear that her mind would succumb under the burden of her 
sorrow. It seemed to him that there was more danger in 
thwarting her natural desire to look upon her beloved dead 
than in letting her have her way. 

The housekeeper had followed her young mistress to the 
threshold of the door and was waiting there. She sliook her 
head and murmured something about Mr. Dolby’s orders, but 
submitted to the authority of a kinsman and family solicitor 
as even superior to the faculty. 

She led the way silently to that upper chamber where the 
murdered man was lying. Matthew Dalbrook put his cousin "s 
icy hand through his arm and supported her steps as they 
slowly followed. Theodore remained in the drawing-room, 
walking up and down in deepest thought, stopping now and 
then in his slow pacing to and fro to contemplate that stain 
upon the velvet pile and the empty chair beside it.’ 

In the room above, Juanita knelt bedde the bed where ho 
who kissed her last night on the threshold of her chamber lay 

in bin ln.«;t RlnmliPr. n. TYia.rhlp fio-nrn wil.b nnlm rlporl 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


65 


shrouded by the snowy sheet, with flowers — white waxen 
exotics — scattered about the bed. No sign of that ghastly 
death showed itself on those marble features. She lifted the 
sheet, and looked upon him, and kissed him with lovers last 
despairing ^ kiss, and then she knelt beside the bed, with her 
face bent in her clasped hands, calmer than she had been at 
any moment since she found her murdered husband lying at 
her feet. 

“ It’s wonderful,^^ whispered the housekeeper to Mr. Dal- 
brook; “ it seems to have soothed her, poor dear, to see him 
— and I was afraid she would have I roken down worse than 
ever.^^ 

“You must give way to her a little, Mrs. Morley. She has 
a powerful mind, and she must not be treated like a child. 
She will live through her trouble and rise superior to it, be 
sure of that, terrible as it is. 

The door opened softly, and a woman came into the room, 
a woman of about five-and-forty, of middle height, slim and 
delicately made, with aquiline nose and fair complexion, and 
flaxen hair just touched with gray. She was deathly pale, but 
her eyes were tearless, and she came quietly to the bed and 
fell on her knees by Juanita^s side and hid her face as Juanita’s 
was hidden, and the first sound that came from her lips was a 
long, low moan — a sound of greater agony than Matthew Dal- 
brook had ever heard in his life until that moment. 

“ Good God!” he muttered to himself, as he moved to a 
distant window, “ I had forgotten Lady Jane.” 

It was Lady Jane, the gentle soul who had loved that poor 
clay with a love that had grown and strengthened with every 
year of his life, with a love that had won liberal response from 
the recipient. There had never been a cloud between them, 
never one moment of disagreement or doubt. Each had been 
secure in the certainty of the other’s affection. It had been 
a union such as is not often ^een between mother and son; and 
it was ended — ended by the red han(f of murder. 

Matthew Dalbrook left the room in silence, beckoning to the 
housekeeper to follow him. 

“Leave them together,” he said. “They will be more 
comfort to each other than any one else in the world can be to 
either of them. Keep in the way — here, in the corridor, in 
case of anythiug going wrong — fainting or hysterics, for in- 
staiice — but so long as they are tolerably calm let them be to- 
gether, and undisturbed.” 

He went back to his son, and they both left the house soon 
afterward and drove off to find the coroner and to confer with 


66 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


him. Later in the afternoon they saw the local policeman, 
whose discoveries, though he evidently thought them im- 
portant, Mr. Dalbrook considered nil. 

He had found out that a certain village freebooter — ostensi- 
bly an agricultural laborer, nocturnally a poacher — bore a 
grudge against Lord Cheriton, and had sworn to be even with 
him sooner or later. The constable opined that, being an 
ignorant man, this person might have mistaken Lord Cheri- 
ton^s son-in-law for Lord Cheriton himself. 

He had discovered, in the second place, that two vans of 
gypsies had encamped just outside the chase on the night after 
the ai-iival of the bridal pair. They were, in fact, the very 
gypsies who had provided Aunt Sally and the French shoot- 
ing-gallery for the amusement of the populace, and he opined 
that some of these gypsies were “ in it.^’ 

Why they should be in It he did not take upon himself to 
explain, but he declared that his experience of the tribe justi- 
fied his suspicions. He was also of opinion that the murderer 
had come with the intent to plunder the drawing-room, which 
was, in his own expression, “chock-full of valuables,*’ and 
that, being disappointed, and furthermore detected, in that 
intent, he had tried to make all things safe by a casual mur- 
der. 

“ But, man alive. Sir Godfrey was sitting in his arm-chair, 
absorbed in his book. There was nothing to prevent any in- 
tending burglar sneaking away unseen. You must find some 
better scent than that if you mean to track the murderer.” 

“I hope, sir, with my experience of the district, I shall 
have a better chance of finding him than a stranger imported 
from the metropolis,” said Constable Barber, severely’. “ I 
conclude there will be a reward offered, Mr. Dalbrook?” 

“ There will, and a large one. 1 must not take upon my- 
self to name the figure. Lord Cheriton will be here to-mor- 
row or next day, and he will, no doubt, take immediate steps. 
You may consider yourself a very lucky man. Barber, if you 
can solve this mystery.” 

Matthew Dalbrook turned from the eager face of the police 
officer with a short, angry sigh. It was of the reward he was 
thinking, no doubt— congratulating himself, perhaps, upon the 
good-luck which had thrown such a murder in his way. And 
presently the man from Scotland Yaid would be on the scene, 
keen and business-like, yet full of a sportsman’s ardor, intent 
on discovery, as on a game in which the stakes were worth 
winning. Little cared either of these for the one fair life cut 
short, for the other young life blighted. 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


67 


CHAPTER VIL 

“ I saw a Fury whetting a death-dart.’* 

Lord Cheritoh liked to take his summer holiday on a 
sunny sea-shore where there were not many English visitors. 
Parame, St. Malo, fulfilled both these conditions. It afforded 
him a vast expanse of golden sands, firm beneath his foot, 
steeped in sunshine for the most part, on which to pace to and 
fro, lifting his eyes dreamily now and then to the island city, 
with its stony rampart, and its quaint Louis Quatorze man- 
sions, facing the sea in the sober dignity of massive stone 
fa9ade and tall windows; gray old houses, which seem too 
good for the age in which they find themselves, solid enough 
to last through long centuries, and to outlive all that yet lin- 
gers of that grandiose France in which they were built. Roof 
above roof rises the island city, steep old streets leading up to 
the cathedral and municipal palace, with the crocheted steeple 
for its pinnacle, shining with a pale brilliance in the summer 
sunlight, verdureless, and with but little color save the reflect- 
ed glory of the skies, and the jasper green of the sea with its 
frame of golden sands. 

Lord Cheriton affected Parame because, though it was 
within a summer night^s journey from his own Isle of Pur- 
beck, it was thoroughly out of the beaten track, and he was 
tolerably secure from those hourly encounters with his most 
particular friends to which he must have submitted at Baden 
or Spa, at Trouville or Dieppe. Parame was Parisian or noth- 
ing. The smart people all came from Paris. English smart- 
ness had its center at Dinard, and the English who patronize 
Dinard will tell you there is no other paradise on earth, and 
that its winter climate is better th^n that of the Riviera, if 
people would only have faith. So long as the Cheritons could 
keep out of the way of exploring friends from Dinard, his lord- 
ship \^as safe from the amusements which to some minds make 
life intolerable. 

Lady Cheriton was distinctly social in her instincts, and 
looked Dinardward sometimes from her lotus-land with a 
longing eye. She would have liked to ask some nice people to 
luncheon; and she knew so many nice people at Dinard. She 
would have liked to organize excursions to Mont St. Michel or 
up the Ranee to Dinan. She would have liked to plunge into 
all manner of innocent gayeties; but her eremite stamped out 
these genial yearnings. 


68 


THE DAY WILL COMB. 


“ It seems such a pity not to have people over to dinner 
when they are such nice operettas and vaudevilles every night 
at the Casino/*^ she sighed. 

“ And if you had them over to dinner, how do you suppose 
they would get back?^^ asked her husband, sternly. Would 
you wish to keep them all till next morning, and be bored with 
them at breakfast?” 

That intervening strip of sea, narrow as it was, afforded 
unspeakable comfort to Lord Cheriton. It was an excuse for 
refusing to go over and take afternoon tea with people he was 
supposed to hold in his heart of hearts in the way of friend- 
ship. 

“ You can go, Maria, if you like,” he told his wife; ‘‘ but 
I am not a good sailor, and I came here on purpose to be 
quiet. 

This was his lordship^s answer to every hospitable sugges- 
tion. He had come to Parame for rest, and not for gadding 
about or entertainments of any kind. 

So the long summer days succeeded each other in a lazy mo- 
notony, and whatever gayety there might be in the great white 
hotel, the English law lord and his wife had no share in it. 
They occupied a suite of light, airy rooms in the west pavilion, 
and were served apart from the vulgar herd, after the fashion 
which befitted a person of Lord Cheriton ’s distinction. They 
had only their body servants, man and maid, so they, were 
waited upon by the servants of the hotel, and they drove about 
the dusty, level roads between St. Servans and Dol in a hired 
landau, fcven by a Breton coachman. Lady Cheriton was 
dull, but contented. She had always submitted to her hus- 
band^s pleasure. He had been a very indulgent husband in 
essentials, and he had made her a peeress. Her married life 
had been eminently satisfactory, and she could afford to en- 
dure one summer month of monotony amid pleasant’ surround- 
ings. She dropped in at the Casino every evening, while Lord 
Cheriton read the papers in the seclusion of his salon — with 
the large Erench window wide open to the blue sea and the 
blue moonlight — hearing the tramp of feet on the terrace or 
the sea-wall beyond, or now and again strains of lively music 
from the white pleasure^domes, where the little opera company 
from Paris were singing joyous quartet or noisy chorus. 

People used to turn round to look at Lady Cheriton as she 
walked gravely between the rows of seats to her place near the 
orchestra, his lordship’s valet following with an extra shawl, 
an opera-glass, and a footstool. He established her in her 
chair, and then retired discreetly to the back of the theater to 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


69 


await his mistresses departure, and to escort her safely back to 
the hotel. He was a large, serious-looking man, a French 
Swiss, who had lived ten years in Italy and over fifteen years 
in Lord Cheritones service, and who spoke French, Italian, 
German, and English indifferently. 

Lady Cheriton was handsome still, with a grand Spanish 
beauty which time had touched lightly. She was tall and dig- 
nified in carriage, though a shade stouter than she could have 
wished, and she dressed to perfection, with extreme sobriety of 
coloring and extreme richness of material. Her life had been 
full of pleasantness, her only sorrow being the loss of her in- 
fant sons, which she had not taken to heart so deeply as the 
proud father who pined for an heir to his newly won honors. 
She had her daughter, her first-born, the child f^r whom her 
heart had first throbbed with the strange new love of mater- 
nity. She shed some natural tears for the boy babies, and then 
she let Juanita fill their place in her heart, and her life again 
seemed complete in its sum of happiness. And now in this 
sleepy summer holiday — cut off from most things that she 
cared for — Juanita^s letters had been her chief joy — those 
happy, innocent, girlish letters, overflowing with fond, foolish 
praise of the husband she loved, letters made up of nothings — 
of what he had said to her, and what she had said to him — 
and where they had taken afternoon tea — and of their morn- 
ing ride or their evening walk, and of those plans for the long 
future which they were always making, projecting their 
thoughts into the time to come, and discussing those after- 
years as if they were a certainty. 

There had been no fairer morning than that which followed 
the night of the murder. Lord Cheriton was an early riser at 
all seasons, most of all in the summer, when he was generally 
awake from five o^clock, and had to beguile an hour or so with 
one of tJie books on' the table by his bed — a well-thumbed 
Horace, or a duodecimo “ Hon Quixote in ten volumes, 
which went everywhere with him. By seven o^clock he was 
dressed and ready to begin the day; and between that hour 
and breakfast-time it was his habit to attend to the cor- 
respondence which had accumulated during the previous day. 
This severe rule was suspended, however, at Parame, and he 
gave himself up to restful vacuity, strolling up and down the 
sands or walking round the walls of St. Malo or sauntering 
into the cathedral in a casual way for an early mass, enjoying 
the atmosphere of the place, with its old-world flavor. 

On this particular morning he went no further than the 
sands, where he paced slowly to and fro in front of the lon^ 


70 


THE DAY WILL COMB. 


white terrace, hotel, and Casino, heedless alike of Parisian 
idhsse coquetting with the crisp wavelets on the edge of the 
sea, and of the mounted officer yonder drilling his men upon 
the sandy waste toward St. Malo. He was in a mood for con- 
summate idleness, but with him idleness was only a synonym 
for deep thought. He was meditating upon his only child^s 
future, and telling himself that he had done well for her. 

Sir Godfrey Carmichael would be made Baron Cheriton in 
the days to come, when he, the first baron, should be laid in the 
newly built vault in the cemetery outside Dorchester. He was 
not going to sever himself from his kindred in that last sleep, 
albeit they were common folk. He would lie under the Egyp- 
tian sarcophagus which he had set up in honor of his father, 
the crocker^i dealer, and his mother, the busy, anxious tr^es- 
man's wife. The sarcophagus was plain and unpretentious, 
hardly too good for the tradesman, yet with a certain solid 
dignity which was not unbefitting the law lord. He had 
chosen the monument with uttermost care, so that it might 
serve the double purpose. He had looked at the broad, blank 
panel many a time, wondering how his own name would look 
upon it, and whether his daughter would have a laurel wreath 
sculptured above it. It might be that admiring friends would 
suggest his being laid in the abbey, hard by those shabby, dis- 
used courts where he had pleaded and sat in judgment through 
so many laborious years; and it might be that the suggestion 
would be accepted by dean and chapter, and that the panel on 
the Dorchester sarcophagus would remain blank. James 
Dalbrook knew that he had deserved well of posterity and, 
above all, of the ruling powers. He had been stanch and un- 
wavering in his adherence to his own party, and he knew that 
he had a strong claim upon any conservative ministry. He 
had sounded those in authority, and he had been assured that 
there would be very little difficulty in gfetting Sir Godfrey Car- 
michael a peerage by and by, when he. Lord Cheriton, should 
be no more. Sir Godfrey's family was one of the oldest in the 
country, and he had but to deserve well of his party, by and 
by, when he had got his seat, to insure future favors. As the 
owner of Cheriton and Carmichael Priory, he would be a 
worthy candidate for one of those coronets which seem to be 
dealt round so freely by expiring ministries, as it were a dying 
father dividing his treasures among his weeping children. So 
far as any man can think with satisfaction of the days when he 
shall be no more — and when this world will go on, badly, of 
course, but somehow, without him — Lord Cheriton thought of 
those far-ofi years when Godfrey Carmichael should be master 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


71 


of Cheriton. The young man had shown such fine qualities 
of heart and mind, and, above all, had given such unobtrusive 
evidence of his affection for Juanita^s father, that the elder 
man must needs give measure for measure; therefore Godfrey 
had been to Lord Cheriton almost as a son. The union of his 
humbly born daughter with one of the oldest families in the 
south of England gratified the pride of the self-made man. 
Ilis own pedigree might be of the lowliest; but his grandson 
would be able to look back upon a long line of ancestors, glori- 
fied by many a patrician alliance. Strong and stern as was 
the fabric of James Dalbrook’s mind, he was not superior to 
the Englishman's foible, and he loved rank and ancient 
lineage. He was a Tory to the core of his heart; and it was 
the earnestness and thoroughness of his convictions which had 
given him weight with his party. Wherever he spoke or 
whatever he wrote — and he had written much in the Satur- 
day Review and the higher-class monthlies upon current 
politics — bore the stamp of a Cromwellian vigor and a Crom- 
wellian sincerity. 

He had never felt more at ease than upon that balmy sum- 
mer morning, pacing those golden sands in dreamy medita- 
tion — brooding over Juanita^s last letter received overnight — 
with its girlish raptures, its girlish dreams; picturing, her in 
the near future as happy a mother as she was a bride, with 
his grandson, the third Baron Cheriton of the future, in her 
lap. He smiled at his own foolishness in thinking of that first 
boy baby by the title which was but one of the possibilities of 
a successful future; yet he found himself repeating the words 
idly, to the rhythm of the wavelets that curled and sparkled 
near his feet — third Baron Cheriton, Godfrey Halbrook Car- 
michael, third Baron Cheriton. 

The cathedra] clock was striking nine as he went into the 
hotel. The light breakfast of coffee and rolls was laid on a 
small round table near the window. Lady Cheriton was sit- 
ting in ail alcove between the massive stone columns which 
supported the balcony above, reading yesterday's “ Morning 
Post " in her soft gray cashmere peignoir, whose flowing lines 
gave dignity to her figure. Her dark hair, as yet untouched 
by time, was arranged with an elegant simplicity. The fine 
old lace about her throat harmonized admirably with the pale 
olive of her complexion. She looked up at her husband with 
her placid smile and gave him her hand in affectionate greet- 

“ What a morning, James! One feels it a privilege to live. 
What a superb day it would be for Mont St. Michel!" 


72 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


A thirty-mile drive in the dust! Do you really think that 
it is the best use to which to put a summer day? You may be 
sure there will be plenty of worthy people of the same opinion, 
and that the rock will swarm with cheap tourists, and pretty 
little Madame Poulard will be put to the pin of her collar to 
feed them all. 

She had seated herself at the table by this time, and was 
pouring out cofiPee with a leisurely air, smiling at her husband 
all the time, thinking him the greatest and wisest of men, even 
when he restrained her social instincts. She was never tired 
of looking at that massive face, with its clearly defined feat- 
ures, sharply cut jaw, and large gray eyes — dark and deep as 
the eyes of the earnest thinker rather than the shrewd ob- 
server. Yet the strong projection of the lower brow indicated 
keen perceptions and the power of rapid judgment; but above 
the perceptive organs the upper brow towered majestically, 
giving the promise of a mind predominant in the regions of 
thought and imagination — such a brow as we look upon with 
reverence in the portraiture of Walter Scott. 

Intellectually, the brow was equal to Scott^s; morally there 
was something wanting. Neither benevolence nor veneration 
was on a par with the reasoning faculties. Tory principles 
with Lord Cheriton were not so much the result of an upward- 
looking nature as they were with Scott. This, at least, is the 
opinion at which a phrenologist might have arrived after a 
careful contemplation of that powerful brow. 

Lord Cheriton sipped his cofiee, and leaned back in his arm- 
chair, with his face to the morning sea. 

The tide was going out; the rocky islets stood high out of 
the emerald water; the golden sands were widening, till it 
seemed almost as if the sea were vanishing altogether from 
this beautiful bay. He sat in a lazy attitude, still thoughtful, 
with those pleasant thoughts which are the repose of the work- 
ing-nian^s brain. 

“ I suppose they will finish their honey-moon in a week or 
two, and move on to the Priory,"^ he said, by and by, reveal- 
ing the subject of his reverie. 

“ Yes, Juanita says we may go home as early as the second 
week in August if we like. She is to be at the Priory in time 
to settle down before the shooting begins. They will have 
visitors in September — his sisters, donT you know — the Morn- 
ingsides and the Grenvilles, and children and nurses— a house 
full. Lady Jane ought to be there to help her to entertain.’^ 

“ I don't think Nita will want any help. She will be mis- 
tress of the situation, depend upon it, and would be if there 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


73 


were forty married sisters with their husbands and belong- 
ings. She seemed to he mistress of us all at Cheriton.^^ 

“ She is so clever/^ sighed the mother, remembering that 
Cheriton House would no longer be under that girlish sover- 
eignty. 

The grave-looking French-Swiss valet appeared with a tele- 
gram on a salver. 

“Who can have sent me a petit hleu9” exclaimed Lord 
Cheriton, who was accustomed to receive a good many of those 
little blue envelopes when he was in Paris, but expected no 
such communications at St. Malo. 

Before leaving for his holiday he had impressed upon land 
steward and house steward that he was not to be bothered 
about anything. 

“ If there is anything wanted you will communicate with 
Messrs. Dalbrook,^^ he said. “ They have full powers.'^ 

And yet here was some worrying message — some question 
about a leas6 or an agreement, or somebody^s rick had been 
burned, or somebody’s chimney had fallen through the roof. 
He opened the little envelope with a vexed air, resentful of 
some trivial annoyance. He read the message, and then sat 
blankly staring; read again, and rose from his seat suddenly 
with a cry of horror. 

Never in his life had he experienced such a shock; never had 
those iron nerves, that heart, burned hard in the furnace of 
this world’s strife, been so tried. He stood aghast, and could 
only give the little paper — with its type-printed syllables — to 
his scared wife, while he stood gazing at summer sky and sum- 
mer sea in a blank helplessness, realizing dimly that some- 
thing had happened which must change the whole course of 
the future, and overthrow every plan he had ever made. 

“ The third Baron Cheriton.” Strange, but in that awful 
moment the words he had repeated idly on the sands an hour 
ago echoed again in his ear. 

Alas! he felt as if that title for which he had toiled was 
already extinct. He saw, as in a vision, the velvet cap, with 
its coronet of pearls, upon the coffin-lid, as the first and last 
Lord Cheriton was carried to his grave. That prophetic 
vision must needs be realized within a few years. There 
would be no one to succeed him. 

Murdered! Why? By whom? What devil had been con- 
jured out of hell to cut short that honest, stainless life? What 
had Godfrey Carmichael done that a murderer’s hand should 
be raised against him? 

The woman's softer nature found relief in tears before the 


74 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


day was done; tears and agonized pacings up and down those 
rooms where life had been so placid in the sunlight of the last 
three weeks — agonized supplications that God would take pity 
upon her widowed girl. 

“ Such a girl, and so happy, and a widow — a widow before 
her nineteenth birthday, wailed the mother. 

Lord Cheriton’s grief was of a sterner kind and found no 
outlet in words. He held a brief consultation with his valet, 
a soldierly looking man, who had fought under Garibaldi in 
Burgundy, when the guerilla captain made his brilliant en- 
deavor to save sinking France. They looked at time-tables, 
and calculated hours. The express to Paris would not arrive 
in time for the evening mail via Calais and Dover. It was 
Saturday. The cargo boat would cross to Southampton that 
night, and influence would obtain accommodation for his lord- 
ship and party. The valet took a fly and drove oft to the 
quay to find the South-western superintendent and secure a 
private cabin for his master and mistress. They would have 
the boat to themselves, and would be at Southampton at seven 
o’clock next morning, and at Cheritoii before noon, even if it 
were necessary to engage a special engine to take them there. 

Lord Cheritoii telegraphed to his daughter: 

“ Your mother and I will be with you to-morrow morning. 
Be brave for our sakes. Remember that you are all we have 
to live for.” 

Another telegram to the house steward ordered a close car- 
riage to be in attendance at Wareham Station from ten o’clock 
upward on Sunday morning. 

“ How quietly you bear it, James,” his wife told Lord 
Cheriton, wonderingly, when the mode of their return had 
been arranged, and her nqiaid was packiug her trunks with 
those soberly handsome gowns which had be& the wonder of 
many a butterfly Parisienne. 

She called him by his Christian name now, as in their 
earliest years of wedded life. It was only on ceremonious 
occasions, and when the eye of society was upon her, that she 
addressed him by his title. 

^ The stern quietude of his face, the fine features set and 
rigid, frightened her more than a loquacious grief would have 
done. And yet she hardly knew whether he felt the calamity 
too much for words, or whether he did not feel it enough. 

“ Poor Godfrey!” she sighed; ‘‘ he was so good to me— all 
that a son could have been — murdex'ed! My God! my God! 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


75 


how horrible! If it had been any other kind of death one 
might bear it— and yet that he should die at all would be too 
dreadful. So young, so handsome — cut off in the flower of 
his days — and she loved him so. She loved him all her life. 
What will become of her without him?’^ 

“ What will become of her?’^ that was the mother moan- 
ing cry all through that dreary day. 

Lord Cheriton paced the sands as far as he could go from 
that giddy multitude in front of the sea wall — beyond the lit- 
tle rocky ridge by the Hotel des Bains, where the young moth- 
ers and nurses and children, and homely, easy-going visitors, 
congregate — away toward Cancale, where all was loneliness. 
He walked up and down, meditating upon his blighted hopes. 
He knew now that he had loved this young man almost as well 
as he loved his own daughter, and that his death had shattered 
as fair a fabric as ever ambition built on the further side of 
the grave. 

“ She will go in mourning for him all the days of my life, 
perhaps, he thought, “ and then, some day, after I am in 
my grave, she will fall in love with an adventurer, and the 
estate 1 love and the fortune I have saved will be squandered 
on the turf or melted at Monte Carlo. 

A grim smile curled his lip at a grim thought, as he paced 
that lonely shore beyond the jutting cliff and the villa on the 
point. 

“ I am sorry 1 left the bench when 1 did,^^ he thought; ‘‘ it 
would have been something to have put on the black cap and 
passed sentence upon that poor lad^s murderer. 

Who was his murderer, and what the motive of the crime? 
Those were questions which Lord Cheriton had been asking 
himself with maddening iteration through that everlasting 
summer day. He welcomed the fading sunlight of late after- 
noon. He could eat nothing; w(i.uld not even sit down to 
make a pretense of dining; but waited, chafing, in the great 
stone hall of the hotel for the carriage that was to take him 
and his wife to the boat. 

Trains were favorable, and there was no necessity for a 
special engine to carry Lord Cheriton and his wife to the house 
of mourning. It was not yet noon when the closed landau 
drove in at the chief gate of the park, not that side gate in the 
deep rocky lane, of which Mrs. Porter was custodian. One of 
the gardeners lived at the lodge, and it was he who opened the 
gate this Sunday morning. Lord Cheriton stopped the car- 
riage to question him. He had heard a full account of the 
murder already from the station-master at Wareham. ^ 


76 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


‘‘ Have they found the murderer he asked. 

“ No, my lord, I’m afraid they’re not likely to — begging 
your lordship’s pardon for venturing an opinion.” 

The man was an old servant, and altogether a superior per- 
son. 

“ Were the gates locked at the usual time on Friday night?” 

“ Yes, my lord, the gates were locked, but that wouldn’t 
keep out a foot-passenger. There’s the turnstile in the lane. ” 

“Of course. Yes, yes. A London detective has-been at 
work, I hear. ” 

“ Yes, my lord; came yesterday before two o’clock, and has 
been about with Barber ever since. ” 

Barber was the rural police-constable. 

“ And have they discovered nothing?” 

“Nothing, my lord; or if they have, it has been kept 
dark.” 

Lord Oheriton asked no further questions. The man was 
right. A detective from Scotland Yard. was not likely to talk 
about any minor discoveries that he might have made. Only 
the one grand discovery of the guilty man would have been in- 
stantly made known. 

Five minutes later the carriage drew up in front of the hall 
door. What a blank and melancholy look the fine old house 
had with all the windows darkened! It did not look so dismal 
as a London house, with its level rows of windows and its fiat 
fa9ade, would have looked under similar conditions; for here 
there was a variety of mullion and molding, bay-windows and 
oriel, dormer and lattice, and over all the growth of lovely 
creeping plants, starry clematis and passion-flower, clinibing 
Dijon roses and waxen magnolia — an infinite beauty of form 
and color. Yet the blind windows were there, with their dull, 
dead look, and chilling suggestion of death behind them. 
Lady Oheriton looked at the house for a moment or so as she 
got out of the carriage, and then burst into team It seemed 
to her as if she had scarcely realized the stern reality of death 
till that moment. 

She went straight to her daughter’s boudoir, a room with 
an oriel-window looking across the wide expanse of the park, 
where the turf lay openest to the sunshine, and where the deer 
were wont to congregate. The garden was at its narrowest 
point just below this window, and consisted only of a broad 
gravel path and a strip of flowers at the top of a steep grass 
bank that sloped down to the ha-ha which divided garden and 
park. The room was full of J uanita’s girlish treasures — evi- 
dences of fancies that had passed like summer clouds — accom- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


77 


plishments begun and abandoned — a zither in one corner, a 
guitar and a mandolin against the wall, an easel in front of 
one window, a gigantic rush work-basket lined with amber 
satin and crammed with all manner of silks, wools, scraps, and 
unfinished undertakings in another. The room remained just 
as she had left it when she went to London at the beginning of 
May. She had never occupied it during her honeymoon; and 
perhaps that was the reason she was here now in her desola- 
tion, sitting silent, statue-like, with Lady Jane by her side, on 
a sofa opposite the oriel. She lifted her eyelids when her 
mother came into the room, and looked up at her in speechless 
despair. She uttered no word of greeting, but sat dumbly. 
Lady Cheriton went over to her and knelt by her side, and 
then feebly, automatically, she put her limp, cold hand into 
her mother’s and hid her bloodless face upon her mother’s 
breast. 

Lady Cheriton held her there with one hand while she 
stretched out her other hand to Lady Jane. 

“ Dear Lady Jane, how good of you to be with her — to 
comfort her!” 

Where else should 1 be? I want to be near him. ” 

The gentle blue eyes filled with tears, the gracious head 
trembled a little. Then came a long shivering sigh and 
silence. 

The mother knelt beside the sofa, with her child’s hea*d 
leaning forward upon her matronly bosom. There may have 
been some comfort, perhaps, in that contact, some recurrence 
of the thoughts and feelings of earlier years, when the mother 
could console every grief and mitigate every pain. No words 
came to either of those three mourners. What could be said 
in mitigation of a sorrow that seemed to offer no point of re- 
lief, no counterbalancing good? There was nothing to be done 
but to sit still and suffer. 

The silence lasted some time, ^nd then Juanita lifted her 
head suddenly from its heavy repose and looked fixedly in her 
mother’s face. 

“ My father has come back with you?” she asked. 

Yes, dearest. We did not lose an hour. Had there been 
any quicker way of traveling we would have been here sooner.” 

‘‘ My father will be able to find the murderer,’- said Juan- 
ita, scarcely hearing her mother’s words, intent upon her own 
thought. ‘‘ A great lawyer as he was; a judge, too; he must 
be able to trace the murderer- -to bring him to justice, to 
take a life for a life. Oh, God!” with a shrill, agonizing cry, 
‘ ‘ could a thousand lives give me back one hour of that one 


THE HAY WILL COHIL 


-^8 

life? Yet it will be something — something — to know that 
that devil has been killed — killed shamefully, in cold blood, in 
the broad light of day. Oh, God, Thou avenger of wrong, 
make his last hours bitter to him, make his last moments hope- 
less, let him see the gates of hell opening before him when he 
stands trembling with the rope round his neck!^^ 

There was something in this vindictive appeal, an intensity 
of hatred which thrilled the two listeners with an icy horror. 
It was like a blast from a frozen region blowing suddenly in 
their faces, and they shivered as they heard. Could it be the 
girl they knew, the loving, lovable girl who, in those deep, 
harsh tones, called upon her God for vengeance and not 
mercy? 

“Oh, my love, my poor, heart-broken love, pray to Him 
to have pity upon us; ask Him to teach us how to bow to the 
rod, how to bear His chastisement. That is the lesson we have 
to learn, pleaded Lady Jane, tearful and submissive even in 
the depth of sorrow. 

“ Is it? My lesson is to see justice done upon the wretch 
who killed my husband — the malignant, the merciless devil. 
There was not one of those slayers of women and children in 
the Indian mutiny worse than the man who killed my love. 
What had he done — he, the kindest and best — generous, 
frank, pitiful to all who ever came in his way — what had he 
done to provoke any man^s enmity? Oh, God, when I re- 
member how good he was, and how much brighter and better 
the world was for having him — 

She began to pace the room, as she had paced it again and 
again in her slow hours of agony, her hands clasped above her 
disheveled head, her great dark eyes — so dove-like in their 
hours of love and happiness — burning with an angry light, 
lurid almost, in the excitement of her fevered brain. . There 
had been times when Lady Jane had feared that reason must 
give way altogether amid this wild delirium of grief. She had 
stayed to watch and to console, forgetting her own broken 
heart, putting aside all considerations of her own sorrow as 
something that might have its way afterward, in order to 
comfort this passionate mourner. 

Comfort, even from affection such as this, was unavailing. 
How and again the girl turned her burning eyes upon the 
mother^s pale, resigned face, and for a moment a thought of 
that chastened, gentle grief softened her. 

“ Dear, dear Lady Jane, God made you better than any 
other woman on this earth, I believe, she cried, amid her 
anguish. “ The saints and martyrs must have been like you. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 79 

but I am not. I am not made like that. I can not kiss the 
rod.^^ 

The meeting between Juanita and her father was more pain- 
ful to him than to her. She hung upon his neck in feverish 
excitement, imploring him to avenge her husband. 

“You can do it, she urged; “ you, who are so clever, 
must know how to bring the murderer’s guilt home to him. 
You will find him, will you not, father? He can not have 
gone very far; he can not have got out of* the country yet. 
Think, it was only Friday. I was a happy woman on Friday; 
only think of that! happy, sitting by Godfrey’s side in the 
phaeton, driving through the sunset, and thinking how beau- 
tiful the world was, and what a privilege it was to live. I had 
no more foreboding than the skylark had singing above our 
heads. And in less than an hour after midnight, my darling 
was dead. Oh, God, how sudden! 1 can not even remember 
his last words. He kissed me as he left me at my bedroom 
door — kissed me and said something.^ I can not remember 
what it was, but 1 can hear the sound of his voice still — I shall 
hear it all my life.” 

Lord Oheriton let her ramble on. He had, alas! so little 
to say to her, such sorry comfort to offer — only words> mere 
words, which must needs sound idle and hollow in the ear of 
grief, frame his consolatory speeches with what eloquence he 
might. He could do nothing for her, since he could not give 
her back her dead. This wild cry for vengeance from those 
young lips shocked him ; yet it was natural, perhaps. He too 
would give much to see the assassin suffer; he too felt that 
the dock and the gallows would be too trivial a punishment 
for that accursed deed. 

He had looked upon the marble face of him who was to have 
been the second Baron Oheriton — looked upon it in its placid 
repose — and had sworn within himself to do all that ingenuity 
could do to avenge that cruel murder. 

“He could not have had an enemy,” he told himself, 
“ unless it was some wretch who hated him for being happy 
and beloved. ” 

He had a long talk with Mr. Luke Churton, the London 
detective, who had exhausted all his means without arriving at 
any satisfactory result. 

“ I confess, my lord, that I am altogether at a stand-still,” 
said Mr. Ghurton, when he had related all that he had done 
since his arrival on the scene early on Saturday afternoon. 
“ The utmost information I have been able to obtain leaves 


80 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


me without one definite idea. There is no one in the neigh« 
borhood open to suspicion, so far as 1 can make out; for I am 
sure your lordship will agree with me that your butler’s notion 
of a poacher resenting your treatment by the murder of your 
son-in-law is much too thin. One can not accept such a notion 
as that for a moment/’ said Mr. Churton, shaking his head. 

“ No, that is an untenable idea, no doubt.” 

“ The next suggestion is that some person was prowling 
about with the intention of abstracting trinkets and other val- 
uables from the drawing-room, in an unguarded moment, 
when the room might happen to be empty — and I admit that 
the present fashion of covering drawing-room tables with 
cabinets and valuables of every description is calculated to 
suggest plunder — but that kind of thing would be probable 
enough in London rather than in the country, and nothing is 
more unlikely than that a prowler of that order would resort 
to murder. * Again, the manner in which the body was found, 
wich the open book lying close to the hand that had held it, 
goes far to prove that Sir Godfrey was shot as he sat ’reading, 
and at a time when a burglar could have no motive for shoot- 
ing him.” 

“ Do think it was the act of a lunatic?” 

“ No, my lord, for in that event the murderer would have 
been heard of or found before now. The gardens, park, and 
chase have been most thoroughly searched under my super- 
intendence. It is not possible for a lap-dog to be hidden any- 
where within this domain. The neighboring villages, solitary 
cottages, commons and copses, have been also submitted to a 
searching investigation; the police all over the country are on 
the alert. Of course the crime is still of very recent date. 
Time to us seems longer than it really is.” 

“ Of course, of course. I can find no other hypothesis than 
that the act was done by a madman. Such a motiveless mur- 
der! a man sitting by a window reading, shot by an unknown 
hand from a garden terrace, remote from the outer world. 
Were we in Ireland the crime might seem commonplace 
enough. Sir Godfrey was a land-owner, and that alone is an 
offense against the idle and the lawless; but here, in the midst 
of an orderly, God-fearing population — ” 

“ Had Sir Godfery no enemy, do you think, my lord?” 
asked the detective, gravely. “ The crime has the look of a 
vendetta.” 

“There never was a young man, owner of a considerable 
estate, more universally beloved. His tenants adored him— 
for as a landlord he has been exceptionally indulgent/' 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


81 


“ He may have granted too much in some quarters, and too 
little in others. 

“ No, no! He has been judicious in his liberality, and he 
has a capital bailiff, an old man who was a servant on his 
estate many years ago. 

“ But there are other influences, said the detective, mus- 
ingly. “ Whenever I meet with a crime of this kind — motive- 
less, apparently — I remember the Eastern prince; I think he 
was one of those long-headed Orientals, wasn^t he, my lord, 
who used to ask, ‘ Who is she?^ In a thoroughly dark case I 
always suspect a woman behind the curtain. Sir Godfrey had 
been independent of all control for a good many years, and a 
young man of fortune, handsome, open-hearted, with only a 
mother to look after him — well, my lord, yoti know the kind 
of thing that generally happens in such cases. ” 

“ You mean that my son-in-law may have been involved in 
some disreputable intrigue?^^ 

“ I don^t say disreputable, my lord; but I venture to sug- 
gest that there may have been some — ahem — some awkward 
entanglement — with a married woman, for instance — and the 
husband — or another lover — may have belonged to the crimi- 
nal classes. There are men who think very little of murder 
when they fancy themselves ill-used by a woman. Half the 
midnight brawls, and nearly half the murders, in the metro- 
polis are caused by jealousy. I know what a large factpr that 
is in the suih-total of crime, and unless you are sure there was 
no entanglement — 

“ I am as sure as I can be of anything outside my own ex- 
isteiKje. I don’t believe that Sir Godfrey ever cared for any 
woman in his life except my daughter.” 

“ He might not have cared, my lord, but he might have 
been drawn in,” suggested Mr. Churton. “ Young men are 
apt to be weak where women are concerned; and women 
know that, unfortunately, and they don’t scruple to use thefr 
power — not the best of ’em even.” 

Young men are apt to be weak. Yes, Lord Cheriton had 
seen enough of the world to know that this was true. It was 
just possible that, in that young life, which had seemed white 
as snow to the eye of kindred and friends, there had been one 
dark secret, one corroding stain — temptation yielded to, 
promises given, never to be fulfilled. Such things have been 
ill many lives, in most lives, perhaps, could we know all. Lord 
Cheriton thought, as he sat silently meditating upon the de- 
tective’s suggestions. 

Lady Jane might know something about her son^^ past, per- 


82 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


haps — something that she might have kept locked in the bene- 
ficent mother^s heart. He determined to sound her delicately 
at the earliest opportunity. But, on being sounded, Lady 
Jane repudiated any such possibility. No, again and again no. 
His youth had been spotless; no hint of an intrigue had ever 
reached her from any quarter. He had chosen his friends 
among the most honorable young men at the university; his 
amusements had been such as became a young Englishman of 
exalted position; he had never stooped to low associations or 
even doubtful company; and from his boyhood upward he had 
adored Juanita. 

‘‘ That love alone would have kept him right, said Lady 
Jane; “ but I do not believe that it was in his nature to go 
wrong. 

It would seem, therefore, that the detective^s suspicion was 
groundless. Jealousy could not have been the motive of the 
crime. 

“ If any of us could be sure that we know each other, I 
ought to accept Lady Janets estimate of her son,'’ thought 
Lord Oheriton; “ but there is always the possibility of an un- 
revealed nature, one phase in a life that has escaped discovery. 
I am almost inclined to think the detective may have hit upon 
the truth. There must have been a motive for this devilish 
act, unless it were done by a maniac. 

The latter supposition seemed hardly probable. Lunacy 
wandering loose about the country would have betrayed itself 
before now. 

It was past five upon that summer afternoon, and Lord 
Oheriton, having seen his daughter, and interviewed the detect- 
ive, was sauntering idly about the gardens in the blank hours 
before dinner. The meal would be served as usual, no doubt, 
at eight o’clock, with all due state and ceremony. The cook 
a1id her maids were busied about its preparation even now in 
this tranquil hpur, when afternoon melts into evening, sliding, 
so softly from day to night that only those evening hymns of 
the birds— and on Sundays those melancholy church-bells thrill- 
ing across the woods — mark the transition. They were scrap- 
ing vegetables and whipping eggs while the birds were at ves- 
pers, and they were talking about the murder as they went 
about their work. When would they ever cease to gloat with 
ghoulish gusto on that deadly theme, with endless iteration of 
“ says he ” and “ says she?” 

^ Lord Oheriton left the stately garden, with its quadruple 
lines of cypress and juniper, its marble balustrades, and 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


83 


clipped hew hedges three feet thicks its statues and alcoves. 
He passed through a little gate, and across a classic single- 
arched bridge to the park, where he sauntered slowly beneath 
his immemorial elms in a strange dream-like frame of mind in 
which he allov/ed his senses to be beguiled by the balmy after- 
noon atmosphere and the golden light, until the all-pervading 
consciousness of a great grief, which had been with him all 
day, slipped off him for the moment, leaving only a feeling of 
luxurious repose, rest after labor. 

Oheriton Chase was exercising its wonted influence upon 
him. He loved the place with that deep love which is often 
felt by the hereditary owner, the man born on the soil, but 
perhaps still oftener, and to a greater degree by him who has 
conquered and won the land by his own hard labor of head or 
hand, by that despicable personage, the self-made man. In 
all his wanderings — those luxurious, reposeful journeyings of 
the man who has conquered fortune — James Dalbrook^s heart 
yearned toward those ancient avenues and yonder gray walls. 
House and domain had all the charm of antiquity, and yet they 
were in a measure his own creation. Everywhere had his 
hand improved and beautified; and he might say with Augus- 
tus that where he had found brick he would leave marble. 
The dense green walls, those open-air courts and quadrangles, 
those obelisks of cypress and juniper, had been there in the 
dominion of the Strangways, with here and there a moldering 
stone syrinx or a moss-grown Pan; but it was he who brought 
choicest marbles from Eome and Plorence to adorn that stately 
pleasance; it was he who had erected yonder fountain, whose 
waters made a monotonous music by day and night. The 
marble balustrades, the mosaic floors, the artistic enrichment 
of terrace and mansion had been his work. If the farms were 
perfect, it was he who had made them so. If his tenants were 
contented, it was because he had showed himself a model land- 
lord — considerate and liberal, but severely exacting, satisfied 
with nothing less than perfection. 

Having thus in a manner created his domain, James Dal- 
brook loved it as a proud, self-contained man is apt to love 
the work of his own hands, and now in this quiet Sunday after- 
noon the very atmosphere of the place soothed him, as if by a 
spell. A kind of sensuous contentment stole into his heart, 
with temporary forgetfulness of his daughter’s ruined life. 
But this did not last long; as he drew near the drive by which 
strangers were allowed to cross the park by immemorial right, 
he remembered that he had questioned one of the lodge-keep- 
ers, but not the other. He struck across an undulating ex- 


84 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


pause of turf where only old hawthorn-trees cast their rugged 
shadows in the evening light, and made for the gate opening 
into the lane. 

Mrs. Porter^s cottage had its usual aspect, a cottage such as 
any gentleman or lady of refined taste might have been pleased 
to inhabit, quaint, mediaeval, with heavy timbers across rough- 
cast walls, deep - set casements, picturesque dormers, and 
thatched roof; with gable ends which were a source of rapture 
to every artist who visited Cheriton — a cottage embowered in 
loveliest creeping plants, starred all over with roses, odorous 
of jasmine and woodbine, and set in a garden where the stand- 
ard roses and carnations were rumored to excel those in her 
ladyship’s own particular flower-garden. Well might a lady 
who had known better days rejoice in such a haven; more 
especially when those better days appeared to have raised her 
no higher than the status of a merchant-captain’s wife. 

Very few people about Cheriton envied her ladyship. It 
was considered that, if not born in the purple, she had at least 
brought her husband a large fortune, and had a right to taste 
the sweets of wealth. But there were many hard-driven wives 
and shabby genteel spinsters who envied Mrs. Porter her sine- 
cure at the gate of Cheriton Park, and who looked grudgingly 
at the garden brimming over with flowers and the lattices 
shining in the evening sun, and through the open casements 
at prettily furnished rooms, and books and photographs and 
other trivial indications of a refined taste. 

“ It is well to be her,” said the curate’s wife, as she went 
home from the village with two mutton-chops in her little 
fancy basket, a basket which suggested ferns and in which she 
always carried a trowel, to give ^the look of casual botany to 
her housewifely errands. 1 wonder whether Lord Cheriton 
allows her an income for doing nothing, or is it only house and 
coals and candles that she gets?” speculated the curate’s wife, 
who lived in a brand-new villa on the outskirts of Cheriton 
Village, a villa that was shabby and dilapidated after • throe 
years’ occupation, and through whose thin walls all the winds 
of winter blew, and whose slate roof made the upper floor like 
a bake-house under the summer sun. 

Lord Cheriton, still sauntering in melancholy meditation, 
came to the cottage garden outside his gates and found Mrs. 
Porter standing among her roses, a tall, black figure, the very 
pink and pattern of respectability, with her prayer-book in one 
hand and a gray silk sunshade in the other. She turned at the 
sound of those august footsteps, and came to the little garden 


THE DAY WILL COME. 85 

gate to greet her benefactor, with a grave countenance, as be- 
fitted the circumstances. 

‘‘ Good-afternoon,^^ he said, briefly. Have you just come 
from church?’^ 

‘‘ Yes, I have been to the children's service.” 

“ Not very interesting, I should imagine, for anybody past 
childhood.” 

“ It is something to do of a Sunday afternoon, and I like to 
hear Mr. Chatterly talk to the children.” 

“ Do you? Well, there is no accounting for tastes. Can 
you tell me anything about my son-in-law^s murderer? Have 
you seen any suspicious characters hanging about? Did you 
notice any one going into the park that night?” 

“ No, I have not seen a mortal out of the common way. 
The gate was locked at the usual hour. Of course the gate 
would make no difierence^it would be easy for any one to get 
into the park.” 

And no one was seen about. It is extraordinary. Have 
you any idea, Mrs. Porter, any theory about this horrible 
calamity that has come upon us?” 

“ How should I have any theory? I am not skilled in find- 
ing out such mysteries, like the man who came from London 
yesterday. Has he made no discoveries?” 

‘‘Not one.” 

“ Then you can^’t expect me to throw a light upon the sub- 
ject.” 

“ You have an advantage over the London detective. You 
know the neighborhood — and you know what kind of man Sir 
Godfrey was. ” 

“ Yes, I know that. How handsome he was, how frank 
and pleasant-looking, and how yoiir daughter adored him. 
They were a beautiful couple.” 

Her dull, sallow cheeks flushed, and her eyes kindled as she 
spoke as if with a genuine enthusiasm. 

“ They were, and they adored each other. It will break 
my daughter’s heart. You have known trouble — about a be- 
loved daughter. I think you can understand what I feel for 
my girl.” 

“ I do — I do! Yes, I know what you must feel — what she 
must feel in her desolation, with all she valued gone from her 
forever. But she has not to drink the cup that my girl must 
drink. Lord Cheriton. She has not fallen. She is not a thing 
for men to trample underfoot and women to shrink away 
from.” 


86 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


‘‘Forgive me/’ said Lord Cheriton, in a softened voice. 
“ I ought not to have spoken of — Mercy.” 

“ You ought never to speak of her — to me. I suppose you 
thought the wound was so old that it might be touched with 
impunity, but you were wrong. That wound will never heal. 
It is raw still — raw and bleeding — just as it was the first day 
when she rose up against me — like a beautiful fury, and defied 
me — and I knew that she was a lost creature. ” 

“ 1 am sure you know that 1 have always been deeply sorry 
for you — for that great affliction,” said Lord Cheriton, gently. 

“ Sorry, yes, I suppose you were sorry. You would have 
been sorry ff a footman had knocked down one of your Sevres 
vases and smashed it. One is sorry for anything that can’t be 
replaced.'” 

“ That is a harsh and unjust way of speaking, Mrs. Porter,” 
said Lord Cheriton, drawing himself up suddenly, with an air 
of wounded dignity. “ You can tell me nothing about our 
trouble, I see; and 1 am not in the mood to talk of any older 
grief. Good-night.” 

He lifted his hat, as he might have done to a duchess, and 
walked slowly back to the park gate and vanished from those 
gray eyes which followed him in eager watchfulness. 

“Is he really sorry?” she asked herself. “Can such a 
man as that be sorry for any one, even his own flesh and 
blood? He has prospered; all things have gone well with him. 
Can he be sorry? It is a check, perhaps; a check to his am- 
bitious hopes. It balks him in his longing to found a family. 
He looks pale and drawn, as if, he had suffered; and at his 
age, after a prosperous life, it must be hard to suffer. ” 

So mused the woman who had seen better days — imbittered 
doubtless by her own decadence — still more by her daughter’s 
fall. 

It was nearly ten years since the daughter had eloped with a 
middle-aged colonel in a cavalry regiment, a visitor at the 
chase — a man of fortune and high family, and about as dia- 
bolical a reputation as a man could enjoy and yet hold her 
majesty’s commission. 

Mercy Porter’s fall had been a surprise to everybody. She 
was a girl of shy and reserved manners, graver and sadder 
than youth should be. She had been kept very close by her 
mother, allowed to make no friendships among other girls in 
the village, to have no companions of her own age. She had 
earJy shown a considerable talent for music, and her piano had 
been her chief pleasure and occupation. Lady Cheriton had 
taken a good deal of notice of her when she grew up, and she 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


87 


might have done well, the gossips said, when they recelled the 
story of her disgrace; but she chose to fall in love with a mar- 
ried man of infamous character, a notorious profligate, and he 
had but to beckon with his finger for her to go olf with him. 
The circumstances of her going oS were discussed confiden- 
tially at feminine tea-drinkings, and it was wondered that Mrs. 
Porter could hold her head so high, and show herself at church 
three times on a Sunday, and entertain the curate and his wife 
at afternoon tea, considering what had happened. 

The curate and his wife were new arrivals comparatively, 
and only knew that dismal common story from hearsay. They 
were both impressed by Mrs. Porter's regular attendance at 
the church services, and by the excellence of that cup of tea 
with which she was always ready to entertain them whenever 
they happened to pass her cottage between four and five 
o'clock. 

The inquest was opened early on the afternoon of Monday 
at the Crown and Scepter, an humble little inn between the 
forge and the church. Lady Carmichael gave her evidence 
with a stony calmness which impressed those who heard her 
more than the stormiest outburst of grief would have done. 
Her mother and his mother had both implored her not to 
break down, to bear herself heroiqally through this terrible 
ordeal, and they were both in the room to support her by 
their presence. Both were surprised at the firness of her man- 
ner, the clear tones of her voice as she made her statement, 
telling how she had heard the shot in her dream, and how she 
had gone down to the drawing-room to find Sir Godfrey lying 
face downward on the carpet, in front of the chair where he 
had been sitting, his hand still upon the open book, which had 
fallen as he fell. .j. 

“ Did you think of going outside to see if any one was lurk- 
ing about?" 

“ No, I thought of nothing but trying to save him. 1 did 
not believe that he was dead." 

There was a look of agony— -a piteous remembrance of the 
moment in which she still hoped — in her large wide-open eyes 
as she said this which thrilled the spectators. 

What course did you take?" 

I rang for the servants. They came— after a time that 
seemed long — but I believe they came quickly." 

‘ ‘ And after they had come — " 

I remember nothing more. They wanted me to believe 


88 THE HAY WILL COME. 

that he was dead — and I would not — I could not believe — and 
— 1 remember no more till next day.^^ 

“ That will do, Lady Carmichael. 1 will not trouble you 
further.^’ 

Lady Jane and Lady Cheriton wanted to take her away 
after this, but she insisted upon remaining. 

“ I want to hear every word,^’ she said. 

They submitted, and the three women, robed in densest 
black, sat in a little group behind the coroner till the end of 
that day’s inquiry. 

No new facts were elicited from any pf the witnesses, and 
nothing had resulted from the elaborate search made not only 
throughout Lord Oheriton’s domain but in the neighborhood. 
No suspicious prowlers had been heard of. The gypsies who 
had contributed to the gayety of the wedding-day had been as- 
certained to have left the Isle of Purbeck a fortnight before 
the murder, and to be delighting the larger world between 
Portsmouth and Havant. Nothing had been discovered, no 
sale of revolver or gun to any questionable purchaser at Dor- 
chester; no indication, however slight, which might put a keen- 
witted detective upon the trail. Mr. Ohurton confessed him- 
self completely at fault. 

The jury drove to Cheriton House to view the body, and 
the inquest was adjourned for a fortnight, in the expectation 
that some discovery might be made in the interim. The funer- 
al would take place at the usual time; there was nothing now 
to hinder the victim being laid in his last resting-place in the 
old Saxon church near. 

Bills offering a reward of two hundred pounds for any in- 
formation leading to the discovery of the murderer were all 
over the village, and in every village and town within a. radius 
of forty miles. The stimulus of cupidity was not wanting to 
sharpen the rural wit. Mr. Churton shook his head despond- 
ently when he talked over the inquest with Lord Cheriton 
later in the day, and owned himself out of it.^^ 

“ I have been in many dark cases, my lord,’"’ he said, “ and 
I’ve had many hard nuts to crack, but this beats 'em all. I 
can’t see my way to making anything of it; and unless you can 
furnish me with any particulars of the poor young gentleman’s 
past life, of an enlightening character, I don’t see much hope 
of getting ahead. ” 

‘'You stick to your idea of the murder being an act of re- 
venge?” 

“ What other reason could there be, for such a murder?” 
f That question seemed unanswerable, and Lord Cheriton let 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


89 


it pass. Matthew Dalbrook and his elder son were to dine 
with him that evening, in order to talk quietly and calmly over 
the terrible event of last week, and the bearing which it must 
have upon his daughter’s future life. Lady Oheriton and Lady 
Jane Carmichael had lived entirely on the upper floor, taking 
such poor apologies for meals as they could be induced to take 
in her ladyship’s morning-room. That closed door at the east- 
ern end of the corridor exercised its solemn influence upon the 
whole house. Those mourning women never went in or out 
without looking that way; and again and again through the 
long still days they visited that chamber of death, carrying 
fairest blooms of stephanotis or camellia, whitest rose-buds, 
waxen lilies; kneeling in silent prayer beside that white bed. 

During all those dismal days before the funeral Juanita 
lived secluded in her own room, only leaving it to go to that 
silent room where the white bed and the white flowers made 
an atmosphere of cold purity, which chilled her heart as if she 
too were dead. She counted the hours which remained before 
even this melancholy link between life and death would be 
broken, and when she must stretch out her hands blindly to 
find one whom the earth would hide from her for evermore. 
In every broken sleep that visited her since Friday night she 
had awakened with her husband’s name upon her lips, with 
outstretched hands that yearned for the touch of his, awaken- 
ing slowly to consciousness of the horrible truth. In every 
dream that she had dreamed he had been with her, and in 
some with a distiiKjtness which involved the memory of her 
sorrow. Yes, she had thought him dead — yes, she had seen 
him stretched bleeding at her feet; but that had been dream 
and delusion. Keality was here, here in his strong voice, here 
in the warm grasp of his hand, here in the lying vision that 
was kinder than truth. 

Mr. Dalbrook and his son arrived at a quarter to eight, and 
were received by Lord Oheriton in the library. The drawing- 
room was now a locked chamber, and it would be long, doubt- 
less, before any one would have the courage to occupy that 
room. The Dalbrooks were to stay at Oheriton till after the 
funeral. Matthew Dalbrook had been Sir Godfrey’s solicitor, 
and it would be his duty to read the will. 

He was also one of the trustees to Juanita’s marriage settle- 
ment, and the time had come — all too soon — when the terms 
of that settlement would have to be discussed. 

“ How is my cousin?” asked Theodore, when he had shaken 
hands with Lord Oheriton. 

“ Have you seen her since — Friday?” 


90 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ Yes, I saw her on Saturday morning. She was terribly 
changed. ” 

“ A ghastly change, is it not?’’ said Cheriton, with a sigh. 
“ I doubt if there is any improvement since then; but she 
behaved splendidly at the inquest this afternoon. We were all 
prepared for her breaking down. God knows whether she will 
ever struggle through her grief, or whether she will go down 
to the grave a broken-hearted woman. Oh, Matt!” turning 
to his kinsman and contemporary, “ such a trial as this teaches 
us how Providence can laugh at our best - laid plans. I 
thought I had made my daughter’s happiness as secure as the 
foundations of this old house.” 

“ You did your best, James. No man can do more. ” 
Theodore was silent for the most part after his inquiry about 
his cousin. He listened while the elder men talked, and gave 
his opinion when it was asked for, and showed himself a good 
man of business; but his depression was not the less evident. 
The thought of Juanita’s grief — the contrast between her 
agony now and her joyousness the day she was at Dorchester 
— was never absent from hi» mind; and the talk of the two 
elder men, the discussion as to the extent of her possessions, 
her power to do this and that, the house she was to live in, the 
establishment she was to keep, jarred upon him horribly. 

“By the conditions of the settlement the Priory is to be hers 
for her life with everything it contains. By the conditions of 
Sir Godfrey’s will, in the event ‘ of his leaving no issue, the 
Priory estate is to go after h^s widow’s ddath to Mrs. Gren- 
ville’s eldest son, or, failing a son in that direction, then to 
Mrs. Morningside’s eldest son. Should neither sister have a 
son surviving at the time of Lady Carmichael’s death, the 
estate is to be sold and the product divided in equal portions 
among the surviving nieces; but at the present rate at which 
the two ladies are filling their nurseries, there is very little 
doubt there will be a son. Mrs. Grenville was Sir Godfrey’s 
favorite, I know, and I can understand his giving her boy the 
estate, and thus founding a family, rather than dividing the 
property between the issue of the two sisters. ” 

“ 1 do not think anybody can find fault with his will,” said 
Lord Cheriton. “ God knows that when 1 saw him sign it in 
my study two hours after his marriage nothing was further 
from my thoughts than the idea that the will would come into 
force within the next fifty years. It seemed almost an idle 

E recaution for so young a man to be in such a hurry to set his 
ouse in order. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


91 


“ Do you think Juanita will decide to live at the Priory?"’ 
asked Mr. Dalbrook. 

“ It would seem more natural for her to live here with her 
mother and me, but 1 fear that this house will seem forever 
accursed to her. She will remember that it was her own whim 
to spend her honey-moon here. It will seem to her as if slie 
had brought her husband to his death. Oh, God! when I re- 
membered how her mother and I suggested other places — liow 
we talked to her of the Tyrol, and the Engadine, of Ilungary, 
of Norway — and with what a kind of childish infatuation she 
clung to her idea of this house, it seems as if a hideous fatality 
guided her to her doom. It is her doom, as well as his. I do 
not believe she wd] ever be a happy woman again.” 

‘ ‘ It may seem so now to us all, to herself, most of all, poor 
girl,” answered Matthew Dalbrook. “ But I never saw a sor- 
row yet that time could not heal; and the sorrow of a girl of 
nineteen leaves such a wide margin for Time’s healing. God 
grant we may both live to see her, you and 1, Cheriton, bright 
and happy again — with a second husband. There is something 
prosaic, I feel, in the very sound, but there may be some touch 
of romance even in a second love.” 

He did not see the painful change in his son’s face while he 
was talking; the sudden crimson which faded slowly to a 
ghastly pallor, whitening even the lips. It had never occurred 
to Matthew Dalbrook that his son Theodore had felt anything 
more than a cousinly regard for Lord Cheri ton’s daughter. 

The funeral took place on the following Wednesday — one of 
those funerals about which people talk for a month, and in 
which grief is almost lost sight of for the bulk of the mourners 
in a feverish excitement. The procession of carriages, very 
few of them unoccupied, was nearly half a mile long; the little 
church-yard at Milbrook could scarcely contain the mourners. 
The sisters’ husbands were there, with hats hidden in crape, 
and solemn countenances; honestly sorry for their brother-in- 
law’s death, but not uninterested in the will. All the district, 
within a radius of thirty miles, had been on the alert to pay 
this last mark of respect to a young man who had been uni- 
versally liked, and whose melancholy fate had moved every 
heart. 

The will was read in the library, and J uanita appeared for 
the first time since her cousins had been at Cheriton. She 
came into the room with her mother, and went to Matthew 
and his son quietly, and gave a hand to each, and answered 
their grave inquiries about her health, without one tear or one 
faltering accent; and then she took her seat beside her father’s 


92 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


chair, and waited for the reading of the will. It seemed to 
her as if it contained her husband’s last words, addressed to 
her from his grave. He knew when he wrote or dictated those 
words that she would not hear them in his life-time. The will 
left her a life-interest in everything, except twenty thousand 
pounds in consols to Lady Jane, a few legacies to old servants 
and local charities, and a few souvenirs to college friends. He 
had held the estate in fee-simple and could deal with it as he 
pleased. He expressed a hope that if his wife survived him she 
would continue to live at the Priory, and that the household 
would remain, as far as possible, unchanged; that no old 
horse would ever be sold, and no dogs disposed of in any way 
off the premises. This last request was to secure a continu- 
ance of old customs. His father had never allowed a horse 
that he had kept over a twelvemonth to be sold, and had never 
parted with a dog. His own hand shot the horse that was no 
longer fit for service; his own hand poisoned the dog whose 
life had ceased to be a blessingi 

When the will was finished, and it was by no means a 
lengthy document. Lady Jane kissed her daughter-in-law. 

You will do as he wished, won’t you, dearest?” she said, 
softly. 

“ Live at the Priory — yes. Lady Jane, unless you will live 
there instead. It would be more natural for you to be mis- 
tress there. When — when — my darling made that will he 
,must have thought of me as an old woman, likely to survive 
him by a few years at most, ai\d it would seem natural to him 
for me to go on living in his house — to continue to live — those 
were his words, you kiiow — to continue to live in the home of 
my long, happy married life; but all is different now; it 
would be better for you to have the Priory. It has been your 
home so long, it is full of associations and interests for you. 

I can live anywhere — anywhere except in this detested house.” 

She had spoken in a low voice all the time, so low as to be 
quite inaudible to her father and Matthew Dalbrook, who were 
talking confidentially upon the other side of the wide oak 
table. 

“ My love, it is your hous^. It will be full of associations 
for you too— the memories of his youth. It may comfort you 
by and by to live among the things he cared for. And I can 
be with you there now and then. You will bear with a mel- 
ancholy old woman now and then?” pleaded Lady Jane, with 
tearful tenderness. 

The only answer was a sob and a clinging pressure of the 
hand; and then the three women quietly left the room. Their 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


93 


interest in the business was over. Blinds had been drawn up 
and Venetian shutters opened. There was a flood of sun- 
shine on the staircase and in the corridors as Juanita went 
back to her room; the perfume of roses, the breath of summer 
came in at the open windows. 

“ Oh, God, how the sun shines she cried, in a sudden 
agouy of remembrance. 

Those odors from the garden, blue sky, and summer green- 
ery and dazzling summer light brought back the image of her 
vanished hapmness. Last week, less than a week ago, she had 
been one of the joyous creatures in that glad, gay world — 
joyous as the thrush whose song was thrilling upon the soft, 
sweet air. 

Lady Janets two sons-in-law had drawn near the oak table 
at which^ the lawyer was seated, with his papers before him. . 

Jessica’s husband, Mr. Grenville, was sporting. His 
thoughts were centered in his stable, where he found an all- 
sufficient occupation for his intellectual powers in an endless 
buying, exchanging, selling, summering, and wintering his 
stud; in the invention of improved bits, and the development 
of new ideas in saddlery; in the performance of operations 
that belong rather to the professional veterinary than to the 
gentleman at large, and in the conversation of his stud groom. 
These resources filled up all the .margin that was left for a 
man who hunted four days a week in his own district, and 
who often got a fifth and even a sixth day in other counties 
accessible by rail. It may have been a natural result of Mr. 
Grenville’s devotion to the stable that Mrs. Grenville was ab- 
sorbed by her nursery; or it may have been a natural bent on 
the lady’s part. However this might be, the lady and the 
gentleman followed parallel lines, in which their interests 
never clashed. He talked of hardly anything but his horses; 
she rarely mentioned any other subject than her children, or 
something bearing upon her children’s well-being. He be- 
lieved his horses to be the best in the county; she considered 
her babies unsurpassed in creation. Both in their line were 
supremely happy. ♦ 

Mr. Morningside, married to Sir Godfrey’s younger sister, 
Euth, was distinctly Parliamentary, and had no sympathies 
in common with such men as Hugo Grenville. To him horses 
were animals with four legs who dragged burdens; who were 
expensive to keep, and whose legs were liable to “ fill ” or to 
develop superfluous bone on the slightest provocation. His 
only idea of a saddle-horse was a slow and stolid cob, for whose 
virtuous disposition and powerful bone he had paid nearly 


94 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


three hundred pounds, and on which he pounded round the 
park three or four times every morning during the Parlia- 
mentary season, an exercise of which he was about as fond as 
he was of Pullna water, but which had been recommended him 
for the good of his liver. 

Mr. Morningside had a castle in the north, too near New- 
castle to be altogether beautiful, and he had a small suite upon 
a fifth fioor in Queen Anne’s Mansion. He had taken this 
apartment as a bachelor pied d terre for the Parliamentary 
season; and he had laid considerable emphasis upon the land- 
owner’s necessity for stern economy which had constrained 
him to take rooms so small as to be altogether “ impossible ” 
for his wife. Mrs. Morningside was, however, of a different 
opinion. No place was impossible for her which her dear 
Stuart deigned to occupy. She did not mind small rooms, or 
a fifth story. Was there not a lift, and were there not charm- 
ing people living ever so much nearer the skies? She did not 
mind even what she gracefully described as “ pigging it,” for 
her dear Stuart’s sake. She was utterly unlike her elder sis- 
ter, and she had no compunction at placing over two hundred 
miles between her and her nursery. 

‘‘ They’d wire for me if anything went wrong,” she said, 

and the express would take me home in a few hours.” 

“ That would depend upon what time you got the wire. 
The express doesn’t go every quarter of an hour, like a Royal 
Blue,” replied Mr. Morningside, gloomily. 

He was a dry-as-dust man; one of those self-satisfied per- 
sons who are never less alone than when alone. He had mar- 
ried at five-and-thirty, and the comfortable habits of a priggish 
bachelor stilL clove to him after six years of married bliss. He 
was fond of his wife in her place, and he thought her a very 
charming woman at the head of his table, and receiving his 
guests at Morningside Castle. But it was essential to his 
peace that - he should have many solitary hours in which to 
pore over Blue Books and meditate upon an intended speech. 
He fancied himself greatly as a speaker, and he was one of 
those Parliamentary bores whose ornate periods are made mince- 
meat of by the reporters. He looked to a day when he would 
take his place with Burke and Walpole, and other giants 
whose oratory had been received coldly in the dawn of their 
senatorial career. He gave himself up to much study of 
politics past and present, and was one of those well-informed 
bores who are only useful as a store-house of hard facts for the 
use of livelier speakers. When a man had to speak upon a 


THE HAY WILL COME. 95 

subject of which he knew nothing, he went to Mr. Morning- 
side as to a Parliamentary Encyclopedia. 

To sustain these stores of knowledge Mr. Morniugside re- 
quired much leisure for what is called heavy reading; and 
heavy reading is not easy in that genial family life which 
means incessant talk and incessant interruption. Mr. Morn- 
ingside would have preferred, therefore, to keep his den on 
the fifth floor to himself; but his wife loved London, and he 
could not refuse her the privilege of occasionally sharing his 
nest on a level with the spires and towers of the great city. 
She made her presence agreeably felt by tables covered with 
photograph easels, Vallauris vases, stray flowers in specimen 
glasses, which were continually being knocked over, Japanese 
screens, and every known variety of chair-back; and albeit he 
was an essentially dutiful husband, Mr. Morniugside never felt 
happier than when he had seen his Ruth comfortably seated in 
the Bournemouth express on her way to the home of her fore- 
fathers for one of those protracted visits that no one but a near 
relation would venture to make. He left her cheerily on such 
occasions, with a promise to run down to the Priory on Satur- 
day evenings whenever it was possible to leave tha helm. 

Mr. Morningside had liked his brother-in-law as well as it 
was in him to like any man, and had been horrified at that 
sudden, inexplicable doom;’ but Sir Godfrey being snatched 
off this earth in the flower of his age, Mr. Morniugside thought 
it only natural that the young Morningsides should derive 
some benefit, immediate or contingent, from their nucleus es- 
tate. It was, therefore, with some disgust that he heard that 
clause in. the will which gave Jessica’s sons the preference over 
all the sons of Ruth. True, that failing any son of Jessica’s, 
the es®e was to lapse to the eldest surviving son of Ruth; but 
what earthly value was such a reversionary interest as this in 
the case of a lady whose nursery was like a rabbit-warren.^ 

“ 1 congratulate you on your eldest boy’s prospects, Gren- 
ville,” said Mr. Morningside, sourly. “Your Tom,” a boy 
whom he hated, “ will come into a very fine thing some of 
these days. ” 

“ Humph,” muttered Grenville, “ Lady Carmichael’s is a 
good life, and I should be very sorry to see it shortened. Be- 
sides, who can tell? Before this time next year there may be 
nearer claimant.” 

“ Lord have mercy upon us,” exclaimed Morningside, “ 1 
never thought of that contingency.” 


96 


the day will come. 


CHAPTEE VIIL 

“ Poor girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed, 

And ’scape at once from Hope’s accursed bands; 

To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow. 

And the next day will be a day of sorrow. ’ ’ 

Life falls back into old grooves after calamities the most 
stupendous. After fires — after plagues — after earthquakes — 
people breakfast and dine, marry and are given in marriage. 
A few more graves testify to the fever that has decimated a 
city; a ruined village here and there along the smiling southern 
shore, shells that were once houses, churclies beneath whose 
shivered domes no worshiper dare ever kneel again, bear wit- 
ness to the earthquake; but the monotonous commonplace of 
life goes on all the same in city and village, on hill and sea- 
shore. And so when Godfrey Carmichael was laid in his grave, 
when the police had exhausted their ingenuity in the vain en- 
deavor to fathom the secret of his death, when the coroner had 
adjourned and again adjourned his inquiry, and the open ver- 
dict had been pronounced, life in Cheriton House resumed its 
old order, and the room in which the bridegroom had lain 
murdered at the feet of the bride was again thrown open to the 
sun and air, and to the sounds of voices, and to the going and 
coming of daily life. 

Lady Cheriton would have had the room closed; for a year 
at least, she pleaded; but her husband told her that to make it 
a sealed chamber now would be to throw it out of use for his 
life-time. 

“ If we once let servants and people think and talk btTt as 
a haunted room, nobody will ever like to occupy it again so 
long as this house stands,^’ he said. “ Stories will be in- 
vented — those things shape themselves unawares in the human 
mind — sounds will be heard, and the whole house will become 
uninhabitable. We both love our house, Maria. Our own 
hands have made it after our own hearts. It would be folly 
to put a brand upon it, and to say henceforward it shall be 
accursed to us. God knows I am sorry for Juanita^s sorrow, 
<sorry for my own loss; but I look to you to help me in keep- 
ing our home bright and pleasant for our declining days. 

_ It was the habit of her life to obey him and try to please 
him in all things; so she answered, gently: 

“ Of course, dear James, it shall be as you wish. I feel 
sure you are right. It would be wicked to shut up that love- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


97 


ly room/^ with a faint shudder, “ but I shall never go near 
the west window without thinking of — our dear boy. And 
I’m afraid Juanita will never be able to endure the room.” 

“ Perhaps not. We can use the other rooms when she is 
here. She has her own house now; and I dare say it will be 
some time yet before she will care to cross this threshold. 
The house must seem fatal to her. It was her own whim 
that brought him here. I’m afraid that recollection will tort- 
ure her, poor child.” 

It was finally decided, therefore, that the drawing-room 
should be used nightly, as it had been in all the peaceful years 
that were gone. The lamps, with their gay shades of rose or 
amber, made spots of colored light amid tables heaped with 
flowers. All the choicest blooms that the hot-houses or the 
gardens could produce were brought, as of old, like offerings 
to a pagan shrine. The numberless toys upon the tables were 
set out in the old orderly disorder — porcelain and enamel bon- 
bon-boxes on one table, antique watches and gold and silver 
snuff-boxes on another, bronzes, intaglios, coins, medals, fili- 
gree scent-bottles upon a third, and a background of flowers 
everywhere. The piano was opened, and the candles lighted 
ready for her ladyship, who sung Spanish ballads delightfully 
even yet, and who was in the habit of singing to her husband 
of an evening whenever they were alone. 

They were generally alone now, not being able to receive 
visitors from the outside world at such a time. The vicar of 
the parish dined at Cheriton now and then, and Matthew Dal- 
brqok spent a night there occasionally, and talked over 
business matters, and the future development of a tract of 
land at Swanage, which formed a portion of the original 
Strangway estate. 

The widow had taken possession of her new home, the home 
which they two were to have lived in for half a century of lov- 
ing union. They had joked about their golden wedding as 
they sat at lunch on the lawn that day; had laughed at the 
thought of how they would look in white hair and wrinkles, 
and then had sighed at the thought of how those they loved 
now would be gone before that day came, and how the friends 
who gathered round them would be new friends, the casual 
acquaintances of the passing years elevated to friendship for 
the > lack of those earlier, nearer, dearer friends Whom death 
had taken. - 

They had talked of their silver wedding, which seemed a 
happier idea; for dear Lady Jane and Juanita’s mother and 
father migllt all live to see that day. They would be old, of 


98 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


course, older by five-and-twenty years; but not too old to be 
happy and beloved. The young wife and husband pictured 
the lawn on which they were sitting crowded with friends and 
tenants and villagers and children; and planned the feasting 
and the sports, which were to havQ a touch of originality, 
something out of the beaten track, which something was not 
easy to devise. 

And now she and Lady Jane were sitting in the same spot, 
in the sultry August evening, two desolate women; the tawny 
giant at their feet, his dog, the mastiff, Styx, looking up at 
them now and then with great serious eyes, as if asking what 
had become of his master. 

Juanita was strangely altered since the days of her honey- 
moon. Her face had grown thin and hollow, and the large 
dark eyes looked larger, and gave a haggard expression to the 
pallid face; but she was bearing her sorrow bravely for Lady 
Jane’s sake, as Lady Jane had done for her sake in the be- 
ginning of things. That gentle lady had broken down after 
the funeral, and Juanita had been constrained to forget her 
own agony for a brief space in trying to comfoit the bereaved 
mother; and so the two acted and reacted upon each other, 
and it was well for them to be together. 

They had settled down in the old house before they had been 
there a week. Lady Jane put off her return to Swanage in- 
definitely. She could drive over now and then to supervise 
the gardening, and she would stay at the Priory as long as 
Juanita wanted her. 

“ That would be always,” said Juanita. 

“ Ah, my love, that would not do. I don’t forget all that 
has been written about mothers-in-law. There must be some 
truth in it.” 

“ Oh, but you forget. That is when there is a son and lyis- 
band to quarrel about,” said Juanita, with a sudden sob. 
“We have no cause for jealousy. We have only our dead.” 

Lady Jane wanted to establish her daughter-in-law in that 
cheerful sitting-room which had been her own, but here Jua- 
nita opposed her. . 

“ I am not going to have itVnow,” she said, resolutely. 
“ It shall be your room always. No one else shall use it. I 
am going to have his room for my den.” 

“ My dearest, it is the dullest room in the house.” 

“It was his room, and I like it better tlian any other in the 
world. ” 

She arranged all her own books and possessions^ in the large 
room looking into the stable-yard, which had been Sir God- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


99 


frey^s study from the time he went to Eton. She found all 
his Eton books on a lower shelf of one of the book-cases, and 
she sat on the floor for an hour dusting grammars and diction- 
ary, first Greek Reader, Latin Gradus, and all the rest of 
them. She found his college books, with the college arms 
upon them, on another shelf. She would have nothing dis- 
turbed or altered, and she was supremely indifferent to the 
f j uestion of incongruity. Her own book-cases from Oheriton, 
the dainty toy book-cases of inlaid satin wood, were squeezed 
into the recess on each side of the fire-place. Her photo- 
graphs of mother, father, friends, horses, and dogs were 
arranged upon the carved oak mantel-piece, above the quaint 
little cupboards with carved doors, spoil of old Belgian choir 
seats, still full of choicd cigars, the young man^s store. His 
spurs and hunting crops, canes, and boxing-gloves decorated 
the panel between the two tall windows. His dispatch-box 
still stood upon the library table, and the dog Styx pushed the 
door open whenever it was left ajar, and strolled into the room 
as by old-established right. 

She felt herself nearer him here than anywhere else, nearer 
even than in the church-yard, where she and Lady Jane went 
every afternoon with fresh flowers for his grave. They had 
not laid him in the family vault, but among the graves of 
gentleman and peasant under the sunny turf — earth to earth. 
The marble was not yet carven which was to mark out his 
grave from amid those humbler resting-places. 

Theodore Dalbrook had not seen his cousin since the day of 
the funeral. His father and his two sisters had called upon 
her at the' Priory, and had brought back an account of the 
quiet dignity with which she bore herself in her melancholy 
position. 

“ I did hot think she had so much solid sense, said Janet, 
and then she and Sophia talked about the Priory as a dwelling- 
house, and of its inferiority to Oheriton, and speculated upon 
the amount of their cousin^s income. 

“ She has a splendid position. She will be a fine catch for 
some one by and by,^^ said Harrington! “ I hope she wonT 
go and throw herself away upon an adventurer.'’^ 

‘‘ 1 hope not,^^ said his father, “ but I suppose she will 
marry again. That seems inevitable. 

“ I doiiT see that it is inevitable, argued Theodore, almost 
angrily. ‘‘ She was devotedly attached to her husband. I 
suppose there is now and then a woman who can remain faith- 
ful to a first love — 

“ When the first love is alive, and not always then,"’ put in 


1 


100 THE liAy WILL COME. 

Sophia, flippantly. “ Of course she will marry again. If she 
wanted to remain single people would not let her, with her 
income. 

Theodore got up land walked to the window. His sister’s 
talk often set his teeth on edge, but rarely so much as it did 
to-day. 

‘‘ You talk of her as if she were the most shallow-brained 
of women,” he exclaimed, with his back to the family group, 
looking out with gloomy eyes into the old-fashioned street, the 
narrow circumscribed view which he had hated of late with a 
deadly hatred. 

“I don’t think she is very deep,” answered Sophia. “ She 
never could appreciate Darwin. She told me once that she 
wondered what I could find to interest me in earth-worms. ” 

“ A woman -must, indeed, be shallow who .feels no interest 
in that thrilling book,” sneered Theodore. 

‘‘ Dpon my word, now,” said the father, “ the book inter- 
ested me, though I’m not a scientific man. .And I never see 
a worm wriggling off the gardener’s spade without feeling that 
I ought to be grateful to him as a potent ally of the landed 
aristocracy. Perhaps,” continued Mr. Dalbrook, musingly, 
“ my own practice in the conveyancing line owes something of 
its substantial character to earth-worms. If it were not for 
them there might be no land to convey. ” 

The conversation drifted lightly away from J uanita and her 
sorrow, but her image still filled Theodore’s mind, and he left 
the drawing-room and the frivolous talk and the clinking of 
tea-cups and tea-spoons, and went out in the declining light 
to walk in the avenue of limes on the edge of the old city. 

He had not called upon his cousin in her new home; he 
shrunk from the very idea of meeting her while her sorrow 
was still new, while her thoughts and feelings were concen- 
trated upon that one subject, while he could only be to her as 
an unwelcome intruder from that.outside world she loathed, as 
grief loathes all but its own sad memories. 

Had the calamity which had desolated her life brought her any 
nearer to him who had loved her so long and so unselfishly? 
Alas! no. He told himself that if she ever loved again it 
would be to a stranger that her reawakening heart would open 
rather than to the rejected lover of the past, the man whom 
her memory would couple with the husband she had lost, and 
whom she would compare disadvantageously with that chosen 
one. 

No, he told himself74hgre was little more chance for him in 
the future than there had been in the past. She liked him, 


Tttl5 DAt WILL COMT:. 


101 


and trusted him, with a sisterly affection, which nothing short 
of a miracle would warm into love. Passion does not grow 
out of such placid beginnings. 

In her very dawn of girlhood she had been in love with God- 
frey; had blushed at his coming; had quarreled with him, and 
wept stormy tears; had suffered all those alterhations of joy 
and grief, pride and self-abasement, which accompany love in 
an impassioned nature. Theodore remembered her treatment 
of the fifth-form Etonian, the under-graduate remembered 
the passionate drama perpetually being acted in those two 
young lives, a drama which he had watched with aching heart; 
and he felt that he co\Tld never be as that first love had been. 
He was associated with the commonplace of her life. She had 
laughed often at his dry-as-d ust talk with her father — the dull 
discussions about leases and bills of dilapidation. A solicitor 
living from year’s end to year’s end in a country town — what 
a dreary person he must needs appear beside the brilliant 
young Oxonian, full of ,the gladness of the life that knows 
neither labor nor care. He sickened at the thought of that 
contrast. 

He had served his father faithfully hitherto, and the bond 
between father and son had been one of strong affection as 
well as duty; but for the last year there had been growing 
upon him an inexpressible weariness of the house in which he 
was born, and the city in which he had lived the chief part of 
his uneventful life. He had struggled against this disgust of 
familiar things, telling himself that it was an unworthy feel- 
ing, and that he would be a snob if he indulged in it. Yet the 
disgust grew into absolute loathing; the monotonous days, the 
repetitive work, oppressed him like a perpetual nightmare. 
Since Juanita’s marriage the burden had become more and 
more intolerable. To be so near her, yet so far. To be let- 
ting life creep away in dull drudgery which could never bring 
him nearer her social level; to feel that all his pursuits and 
associations were beneath the woman he loved, and could 
never arouse the faintest interest in tier mind. This was 
almost too bitter to be borne, and he had for some time past 
been meditating some way of escape, «ome manner of release 
from these old fetters into the wider arena of the outer world. 

Such escape was not easy. He had to think of his father, 
that indulgent, large-minded father who* had given his son a 
very remunerative share in his practice at an age when most 
young men are dependent for every suit of clothes or five- 
pound note upon parental bounty and parental caprice. He 
knew that his father looked to him for an entire release from 


102 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


work before they were many years older; and that he would 
then find himself sole master of a business worth at least fif- 
teen hundred a year. All this had come to him and would 
come to him easily, as the freely given reward of conscientious 
and intelligent work. It was a prospect which few young 
men would forego without considerable hesitation; but Theo- 
dore hardly thought of the substantial advantages which he 
was so eager to sacrifice. His sole hesitation was on account 
of the disappointment which the step he contemplated would 
inflict upon his father. 

He was not without a' foreshadowing of a plan by which 
that disappointment might be in somewise lessened. He kept 
an eye upon his brother for some time past, and he had dis- 
covered that the young man^s fervor for the Anglican Church 
had begun to cool. There were all the signs of wavering in 
that gifted youth. At one time he devoted all his study to 
the writings of Cardinal Newman, Hurrel Froude, and the 
Tractarian Party — he lived in the atmosphere of Oxford in the 
forties; he talked of Cardinal Manning as the head and front 
of religious thought. He was on the verge of deciding for the 
Old Faith. Then a sudden change came over the spirit of his 
dream. He began to have doubts, not of the reformed faith, 
but of every western creed. 

‘‘ Light comes from the East,^’ he told his sisters, with an 
oracular air. “ I doubt if there is any nearer resting-place 
for the sole of my foot than tho Temple of Buddha. find 
there the larger creed for which my mind yearns — boundless 
vistas behind and before me. I begin to entertain painful 
doubts of my fitness for the Anglican Church. I might be a 
power, perhaps, but it would be outside those narrow bounds 
— like Voysey, or Stopford Brooke. The Church, with its 
present limitations, would not hold me.’^ 

The sisters sympathized, argued, quoted essays and reviews, 
and talked of Darwin and Spencer, Huxley and Comte. Theo- 
dore listened and said nothing. He saw which way the tide 
was drifting, and rejoiced in the change of the current. 

And now this sultry August afternoon, pacing up and down 
the green walk, he was expectant of an opportunity of discuss- 
ing his brother's future with that gentleman himself, as Har- 
rington was in the habit of taking his afternoon constitutional, 
book in hand, upon this very path. 

He appeared by and by, carrying an open volume of Max 
Miiller, and looking at the nurse-maids and perambulators. 

“ What, Theo, taking your meditative cigar? You don't 
often give yourself a holiday before dinner." 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


103 


‘‘ No, but I want to talk to you alone, and 1 knew this was 
your beat.^^ 

“ Nothing gone wrong, 1 hope.^^ 

“ No, it is your future i want to discuss, if you don^t mind. 

“ My future is wrapped in a cloud of doubt, ^'’ replied the 
young man, dreamily. “ Were the Church differently consti- 
tuted — were the minds that rule in it of a larger cast, a wider 
grasp, a — 

“ Harrington, how would you like the law as a profession?” 
Theodore asked, abruptly, when the other began to hesitate. 

“ My dear fellow, it is all very well to ask me that question, 
when you know there is no room for me in my father’s office,” 
retorte>d Harrington, with a contemptuous wave of that long, 
lean white hand, which always reminded him of St. Francis do 
Sales or Savonarola; not that he had any positive knowledge 
of what those saintly hands were like. 

“ Room might be made for you,” said Theodore. 

“ I should not care to accept a subordinate position. Aid 
CcBsar — ” 

“ So far as the Caesarship of a provincial solicitor’s office 
may go, the whole empire may be yours by and by, if you like, 
provided you put your shoulder to the wheel, and pass your 
examinations. 

‘‘ Do you mean to say that you would throw up your posi- 
tion, and an income which would allow of your marrying to- 
morrow if you chose, to make room for me?” 

“ If I can get my father’s consent, yes, decidedly.” 

“ And how do you propose to exist without a profession?” 

“ I don’t propose anything of the kind. I mean to go to 
the Bar.” 

Oh, I begin to understand. A solicitor’s office is not good 
enough for you. ” 

“ I don’t say that; but I have taken a disgust — an unrea- 
sonable disgust, no doubt — to that branch of the law, and 1 
am very sick of Dorchester.” 

“ So ani I,” retorted Harrington, gazing vaguely at a pretty 
nurse-maid. “We are agreed there, at any rate. And you 
want to follow in Lord Cheriton’s track, and make a great 
name?” 

“ It is only one man in a thousand who succeeds as James 
Dalbrook has succeeded; but if I go to the Bar you may be 
sure I shall do my best to get on, and I shall start with a pretty 
good knowledge of common law.” 

“You want to be in London; you are pining for an aesthetic 
center, ” sighed Harrington. 


104 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ I don^t quite know what that is, but I should prefer Lon- 
don to Dorchester.^' 

‘‘ So should 1, and you want me to take your place at the 
mill, to grind out my soul in the dull round that has sickened 
you." 

“ The life has begun to pall upon me, but I think it ought 
to suit you," answered Theodore, thoughtfully. You are 
fonder of home, and of the sisters, than I am. You get on 
better with them." 

“ You have been rather grumpy lately, 1 admit," said Har- 
rington. 

“ And you have let yourself cool upon your divinity exam. 
You evidently don't mean the Church?" 

“ I have outgrown the Church. You can't put a quart of 
water into a pint bottle." 

‘‘ And you must do something. I don't think you can do 
anything so good as to take my place and become my father's 
right hand until he chooses to retire and leave you the prac- 
tice. You will have married by that time, perhaps, and will 
have sobered down — intellectually. Morally you are one of 
the steadiest fellows I know." 

“ I suppose I ought to consider this what the house-agents 
call an unusual opportunity," said Harrington, “ but you 
must give me time to think it over." 

“ Take time," answered Theodore, briefly, “ and I'll talk 
to my father in the meanwhile. '.' 

Mr. Dalbrook received his elder son's communication as if 
it had been a blow from an enemy's hand. 

“Do you suppose, that ass Harrington can ever take your 
place?" he exclaimed; whereupon Theodore took pains to ex- 
plain that his brother was by no means an ass, and that he 
was only laboring under that burden of small affectations 
which weighs down a young man who has been allowed to live 
too much in the society of young women—sisters and sisters' 
friends — and to consider all his own utterances oracular. 

“ He is not so fit for the Church as Brown is," said Theo- 
dore, “ and he will only addle his brains if he reads any more 
theology. He won't be content with Paley and Butler, and 
the good old books which have been the turnpike road to or- 
dination for a century. • He is all for new ideas, and the new 
ideas are too big for him. But if you will give him his arti- 
cles, and teach him as you taught me — " 

“ I don't think I taught yoii much. You seemed to get at 
everything by instinpt. " 

“ Ah, you taught me my profession without knowing it, and 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


105 


you will teach Harrington with just as little trouble. He will 
shake off that husk of affectation in your office — no solicitor 
can be affected — and he will come out a good lawyer, while I 
am trying my luck in Temple chambers, reading and waiting 
for briefs. With your help, by and by, I am bound to do 
something. I shall get a case or two upon this circuit, any- 
how. 

‘ ‘ I canT think what has put this folly in your head, Theo, 
said his father, with a ve:^ed air. 

“ It is not folly, father; it is not a caprice,^^ the young man 
protested, with sudden earnestness. “ For God’s sake don’t 
think me ungrateful, or that I would willingly turn my hack 
upon my duty to you. Only, young people have troubles of their 
own, don’t you know, and of late I have not been altogether 
happy. I have not prospered in my own love-dream, and so I 
have set up a new idol, that idol so many men worship with 
more or less reward — success. 1 want to spread my wings, 
and see if they will carry me on a longer flight than 1 have 
taken yet.” 

“ Well, it would be selfish of me to balk you,, even if your 
loss were to cripple me altogether. And it won’t do that. I 
am strong enough to work on for a fewjears longer than I in- , 
tended.” 

“ Oh, my dear father, I hope' it won’t come to that. I hope 
my change of plan won’t shorten your years of leisure.” 

“ I’m afraid that’s inevitable, Theo. I can’t transfer a fine 
practice to my son till I’ve made him a good lawyer — and God 
knows how long that will take in Harrington’s case. Judging 
by my present estimation of him, I should say half a century. 
But don’t be downhearted, Theo. You shall eat your dinners. 
You shall qualify for the Woolsack. After all, I don’t know 
how a life of leisure might suit me. It would be a change, 
from the known to the unknown, almost as stupendous as the 
change from life to death. ” 

Perhaps Matthew Ddbrook had fathomed that secret woe at 
which Theodore had hinted darkly; in any case, he took his 
elder son’s defection more easily than might have been hoped, 
and bore patiently with some preliminary fatuity from the 
younger son, who accepted the gift of his articles, an allowance 
of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum, and the promise 
of a junior partnership in the near future, with the languid 
politeness of one who felt that he was sacrificing a miter. 

Everythir^ was settled off-hand, and Theodore was to go to 
London at the end of September to select and furnish his mod- 


Z06 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


est chambers in one of those grave old courts of the Temple, 
and be ready to begin his new life with the beginning of term. 

He had not seen his cousin since the funeral, and she had 
been told nothing of this sudden reconstruction of his life; but 
he determined to see her before he left Dorchester, and he 
considered that he had a right, as her kinsman, to bid her 
good-bye. Perhaps in his heart-weariness he was inclined to 
exaggerate the solemnity of that leave-taking, somewhat as if 
he had been starting for Australia. 

He drove over to the Priory on a dull gray afternoon, his 
last day in Dorchester. His portmanteaus were packed, and 
all things were ready for an early departure next morning. 
Sorely as he had sickened of the good old town which was his 
birthplace, he felt a shade of melancholy at the idea of cutting 
himself adrift altogether from that quiet haven, and the love 
of t;hose open stretches of heath between the city and Ware- 
ham, and those swampy meadows and grazing cattle on the 
other side of that sleepy little town, was ingrained in him 
deepe^r than he knew. It was a landscape which took a pecul- 
iar charm from the gray dimness of an autumnal atmosphere, 
and it seemed to Theodore Dalbrook that those level pastures 
and winding waters had never looked fairer than they looked 
^to-day. 

He had written to his cousin a day before to tell her of his 
intended visit. It was too solemn a thing for him to leave the 
finding her at home to chance. ‘ His groom took the dog-cart 
round to the stables, while he was ushered at once to the draw- 
ing-room, where Lady Carmichael was sitting at her work- 
table in the bay-window, with Styx stretched on a lion-skin at 
her feet. 

The silence of the house struck Theodore Dalbrook painfully 
as he followed the footman across the hall and along a corridor 
which led to the drawing-room— that death-like silence of a 
roomy old mansion in which there are neither children nor 
guests, only one lonely inhabitant, waited upoD by solemn- 
visaged servants, drilled to a phenomenal quietness, and keep- 
ing all their good spirits for the remoteness of the servants’ 
hail, shut 00 by double doors and long passages. Maddened by 
that atmosphere of gloom, he entered his cousin’s presence, 
and stood with her small cold hand in his, looking at the face 
wliich had changed so sorely from that vivid beauty which had 
shone upon him in the low light of the sinking sun on that 
summer evening not three months ago. 

As he looked the memory of the bride’s face came between 
him and the face of the widow, and for a moment or two he 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


107 


stood speechless. The clearly cut features were pinched and 
sharpened, wasted by long nights of weeping, long days of 
silent regret. The dark eyes were circled by purple shadows, 
and the oval cheeks were sunken and pallid. All the color 
and richness of that southern beauty had vanished, as if some 
withering blight had passed over the face. 

“ It was very good of you to think of me before you left 
Dorchester, she said, gently. 

She pushed forward a chair for her cousin before she sat 
down, and Theodore seated himself opposite to her, with the 
wicker-work table between them. He wondered a little to see 
that satin-lined receptacle gorged with bright-colored silks and 
pieces of unfinished embroidery, for it seemed to him that 
there was a touch of frivolity in this light ornamental needle- 
work which hardly harmonized with her grief-stircken counte- 
nance. 

‘‘ You could not suppose that I should leave without seeing 
you,^’ he said. ‘‘ I should have come here weeks ago, only— 

“ Only you wanted to give me time to grow calm, to teach 
myself to look my trouble straight in the face,^^ she said, in- 
terpreting his thought. “ That was very thoughtful of you. 
Well, the storm is over now. I am quite calm, as you see. I 
dare say some people think I am getting over it. That is the 
usual phrase, is it not? And so you are going to the Bar, 
Theodore? I am glad of that. You are clever enough to 
make a name, as my father did. It will be slow work, I sup- 
pose; but it will be a field worthy of your ambition, which a 
solicitor's office in a market-town never would be.'’^ 

“ I have felt the want of a wider field for a long time; and 
I shall feel more interest in a barrister’s work. But I hope 
you don’t think I am conceited enough to expect to get on as 
well as your father.” 

‘‘ I don’t know about that. I think you must know you 
are a clever man. I have been wishing to see you for a long 
time, Theodore, only I was like you: I wanted to give myself 
time to be calm. I want to talk to you about — the mur- 
derer. ” 

“ Yes. Have you heard anything? Has there been any 
discovery?” 

“ Nothing. The offer of a reward has resulted in nothing — 
not one little scrap of information. The London detective 
gave up the business and went back to town a week after the 
funeral, having obtained only negative results. The police 
hereabouts are creatures without an idea; and so, unless some- 
thing is done, unless some clever brain can solve the riddle. 


/08 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


the wretch who killed my husband may go down to the grave 
unpunished. 

“ It is hard that it should be so/^ said Theodore, quietly; 
“ yet it is an almost Impossible case. There is not a single 
indication, so far, to put one on the track — not one little 
clew.'’’ 

“Not for these dull-brained mechanical discoverers, per- 
haps; but for you or me, Theo, for us who loved him, there 
ought to be light. Think what a strange murder it was! Not 
for gain, remember. Had it been the hand of a burglar that 
shot him, I could understand the difficulty of tracing that par- 
ticular criminal among all the criminal classes. But this mur- 
der, which seems utterly motiveless, must have been prompted 
by some extraordinary motive. It was not the act of a 
maniac; a maniac must have left some trace of his presence in 
the neighborhood. A maniac could not have so completely 
eluded the police on the alert to hunt him down. There must 
have been some indication.” 

“ Pqt madness out of the question, Juanita; what, then?” 

“ Hatred, Theodore. That is the strongest passion in the 
human mind — a savage hatred which could not be satisfied ex- 
cept with the fairest, brightest life that it had the power to 
destroy — a relentless hatr^ — not against him, not against my 
beloved. What had he done in all his good life that any one 
upon this earth should hate him? But against us — against my 
father and mother and me — the usurpers, the owners of Cheri- 
ton Manor; against us who have thrust ourselves upon the soil 
which that old wicked race held so long. Oh, Theodore, I 
have thought and thought of this, till the conviction has grown 
into my mind — till it has seemed like a revelation from God. 
It is one of that wicked family who has struck this blow.” 

“ One of your predecessors — the Strang ways? Is that what 
you mean, Nita?” 

“ Yes, that is what I mean.” 

“My dear Juanita, it is too wild an idea. Whatl after your 
father has owned the estate nearly a quarter of a century? 
Why should the enemy wait all those years, and choose such a 
time?” 

“ Because there never before was such an opportunity of 
striking a blow that should bring ruin upon us. My father’s 
hope of making his son-in-law his successor in the peerage was 
known to a good many people. It may easily have reached 
the ears of the Strangways. ” 

“ My dear girl, the family has died off like rotten sheep. I 
doubt if there are any survivors of the old race.” 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


109 


Oh, but families are not obliterated so easily. There is 
always some one left. There were two sons and a daughter of 
the old squire^s. Surely one of those must have left children. 

“ But, J uanita, to suppose that any man could hate the pur- 
chaser of his squandered estate with a hatred malignant enough 
for murder is to imagine humanity akin to devils.^'’ 

‘‘We are akin to devils!^’’ cried Juanita, excitedly. “I 
have. felt that I could rejoice as the devils rejoice at human 
suffering if 1 could see my husband^s murderer tortured. Yes, 
if he were tied against a tree, as Indian savages tie their sacri- 
ficial victims — tied against a tree and killed by inches, with 
every variety of torture which a hellish ingenuity Can suggest 
— I would say my litany, like those savages, my litany of tri- 
umph and content. Yes, Th\3odore, we have more in common 
with the devils than you may think. 

“ 1 can not see the possibility of murder prompted by such 
an inadequate motive,^^ said Theodore, slowly, remembering, 
as he spoke, how Churton had suggested that the crime looked 
like a vendetta. 

“ Inadequate! Ah, that depends^ donT you see. Remem- 
ber, we have not to deal with good people. The Strang ways 
were always an evil race. Almost every tradition tha’3 re- 
mains about their lives is a story of wrong-doing. And think 
how small a wound may be deadly when the blood has poison 
in it beforehand. And is it a small thing to see strangers in a 
home that has been in one^s family for three centuries? Again, 
remember that although nothing throve on the Oheriton es- 
tate while the Strangways held it — or, at any rate, not for the 
las4 hundred years of their holding — no sooner was my father 
in possession than the luck changed. Quarries were developed; 
land that had been almost worthless became valuable for build- 
ing. Everything has prospered with him. And think of them 
outside — banished forever, like Adam and Eve out of Para- 
dise. Think of them, with hate and envy gnawing their 
hearts. 

“ There would be time for them to get over that feeling in 
four-and-twenty years. And when you talk about them, I 
should like to know exactly whom you mean. J assure you 
the general idea is that they have all died off; that is to say, 
all the direct line. 

“ It is upon that very subject I want to talk to you, Theo- 
dore. Would you like to do me a service,, a very great serv- 
ice?^’ 

“ Nothing would make me happier. 

“ Then will you try to find out all about the Strangways — 


no 


THE ,DAY WILL COME. 


if they are really all gone, or if there are not some survivors, 
or a survivor, of the last squire’s family? If you can do that 
much it will be something gained. We shall know better what 
to think. When I heard that you were going to live in Lon- 
don, it flashed into my mind that you would be just the right 
person to help me, and I knew how good you had been to me 
always, and that you would help. London is the place to 
make your inquiries. I have heard my father say that all 
broken lives, all doubtful characters, gravitate toward Lon- 
don. It is the one place where people fancy they can hide.” 

“ I will do everything in my power to realize your wish, 
Juanita. I shall be a solitary man, with a good deal of leisure, 
so I ought to succeed, if success be possible.” 

They were silent for some few minutes, Juanita being ex- 
hausted with the passionate vehemence of her speech. She 
took up a piece of . embroidery from the basket, and began, 
with slow, careful stitches, upon the petal of a dog-rose. 

“ I am glad to see you engaged upon that artistic embroid- 
ery,” said Theodore, presently, for the sake of saying some- 
thing. 

“ That means, perhaps, that you wonder I can care for such 
frivolous work, as this,” she said, interpreting his recent 
thought, when his eyes first lighted on her satin-lined basket, 
with its rainbow-hued silks. “It seems inconsistent, I dare 
say; but this work has helped me to quiet my brain many a 
time when I have felt myself on 'the brink of madness. These 
slow regular stitches, the mechanical movement of my hand 
as the flowers grow gradually, stitch by stitch, through the 
long melancholy day, have quieted my nerves. I can not r«id. 
Books give me no comfort, for my eyes follow the page while 
my mind is brooding on my own troubles. It is better to sit 
and think quietly while I work. It is better to face my sor- 
row.” 

“ Have you been long alone?” 

“No. It is only three weeks since Lady Jan’e went back 
to Swanage; and she comes to see me two or three times a 
week. My father and mother come as often. You must not 
think I am deserted. Every one is very good to me.” 

“ They have need to be.” 

Again there was a brief interval of silence, and then Juanita 
closed her basket, and lifted her earnest eyes to her cousin’s 
face. 

“ You know all about the Strangways?” she inquired. 

“ I have heard a good deal about them from one and an- 
other. People who live in the country have long memories. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


Ill 


juid are fond of talking of the lords of the soil, even when the 
i-ace has vanished from the land. I have heard elderly men 
tell their after-dinner stories about the Strangways at my 
f ather^s table. 

“ You know the family portraits at Cheriton?^^ 

“ The pictures in the hall? Y6s. I have wondered some- 
times that your father should have kept them there — effigies 
of an alien race.^"" 

“ I hate the'm/^ exclaimed Juanita, shuddering. “ I always 
had an uncomfortable feeling about them, a feeling of strange 
cold eyes looking at us in secret enmity; but now I abhor 
them. There is a girTs face — a cruel face — that I used rather 
to admire when I was a child, and sometimes dream about; 
and on the last night but one of — my happy life — I looked at 
that picture, with Godfrey, and told him my feeling about that 
face, and he told me the pitiful story of the original. The 
creature had a sad life, and died in France, poor and broken- 
hearted. Two hours later I heard a strange step upon the ter- 
race, while Godfrey and I were sitting in the library — a 
stealthy, creeping step, coming near one of the open windows, 
and then creeping away again. When we looked out there 
was no one to be seen.'’^ 

“ And this was the night before — Sir Godfrey’s death?” 

“ Yes. I told my father about it — after — after my trouble; 
and when he questioned the gardeners he discovered that foot- 
prints had been seen by one of them on the damp gravel the 
morning after I heard that ghost-like step. They were strange 
footprints, the man was *^sure, or he would not have noticed 
them. The print of a shoe with a flat heel — not of a largo 
foot — but they were not very distinct, and he went over them 
with his roller, and rolled them out, arid thought no more 
about the fact until my father questioned him. The next day 
was dry and warm, as you know, and the gravel was hard next 
night. There were no footprints seen — afterward.” 

“ Did the gardener trace those marks beyond the terrace — to 
the avenue, for instance?” 

“Not he. All he did was to, roll them out with his iron 
roller. ” 

“ They suggest one point — that the murderer may have 
been lurking about on the night before the crime.” 

“lam sure of it. That footstep would not have frightened 
me if there had been no meaning in it. I felt as a Scotchman 
does when he has seen the shadow of the shroud round his 
friend’s figure. It is a point for you to remember, Theodore, 
if you mean to help me. ” 


112 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


I do mejyi to help you/^ 

“ God bless you for that promise/'’ she cried, giving him her 
hand, “ and if you want any further infdrmatton about the 
Strang ways there is some one here who may be useful. God- 
frey’s old bailiff, Jasper Crane, lived over ten years at Cheri- 
ton. He only left there when the squire died, and he almost 
immediately entered the service of Godfrey’s father. If you 
can stay till the evening I will send for him, and you can ask 
him as many questions as you like.” 

‘‘ I will stay. There is a moon rather late in the evening, 
and I shall be able to get back any time before midnight. 
But, Juanita, as an honest man, I am bound to tell you that 
I believe you are following an ignis fatuus— you are influenced 
by prejudices and fancies rather than by reason.'” 

CHAPTEK IX. 

“ The snow 

Of her sweet coldness hath extinguished quite 
The fire that but even now began to flame.” 

Theodore Dalbrook, a sensible, hard-headed man of busi- 
ness, was like a puppet in his cousin’s hands. She told him 
to toil for her, and he deemed himself privileged to be allowed 
so to labor. She put him upon that which, according to his 
own conviction, was an absolutely false track, and he was com- 
pelled to follow it. She bade him think of her thoughts, and 
he bent his mind to hers. 

Yes, she was right, perhaps. It 'was a vendetta. Lord 
Cheriton had lived all these years hemmed round with unseen, 
unsuspected foes. They had not burned his ricks, or tried to 
burn his dwelling-house; they had not slandered him to the 
neighborhood in anonymous letters; they had not poisoned his 
dogs or his pheasants.- Such petty malevolence had been too 
insignificant for them. But they had waited till his fortunes 
had reached their apogee, till his only child had grown from 
bud to flower, and he had wedded her to an estimable young 
man of patrician ancestry and irreproachable surroundings. 
And, just when fate was fairest, the cowardly blow had been 
struck — a blow that blighted one young life, and darkened 
those two other lives sloping toward the grave — the lives of 
father and mother, rendered desolate because of their daugh- 
ter’s desolation. 

Mastered by that will which was his law, the will of the 
woman he loved, Theodore began to believe as she believed, 
or at least to think it just possible that there might be among 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


113 


the remnant of the Strangway race a man so lost and pervert- 
ed, so soured by poverty, so envenomed by disgraces and mor- 
tifications, eating slowly into the angry heart, like rust into 
iron, that he had become at last the very incarnation of 
malignity — hating the man who- had prospered while he had 
failed, hating the owner of his people^^s forfeited estate, as if 
that man had robbed them of it — hating with so passionate a 
malevolence t|iat nothing but murder could appease his wrath. 
Yes, there might be such a man. In the history of mankind 
there had been such crimes. They are not common, in Eng- 
land, happily; but among the Celtic nations they are not un- 
common. 

“ My first brief, mused Theodore, with a grim smile, as 
he walked up and down the drawing-room while his cousin was 
writing a memorandum requesting the bailiff ^s presence. “ It 
is more like a case intrusted to a detective than submitted to 
counsel’s opinion; but it will serve to occupy my mind while I 
am eating my dinners. My poor Juanita! Will her loss seem 
less, I wonder, when she has discovered the hand that widowed 
her?” 

He dined with his cousin at a small' round table in the 
spacious dining-room which had held so many cheerful gath- 
erings in the years that were gone; the sisters and their hus- 
bands, and the sisters’ friends; and Godfrey’s college friends; 
and those old friends of the neighborhood who seemed only a 
little less than kindred," by reason of his having known them 
all his life. And how these two were sitting here alone, and 
the corners of the room were full of shadows. One large cir- 
cular lamp suspended over the table was the only light, the 
carving being done in a serving-room adjoining. 

Juanita was too hospitable to allow the meal to be silent or 
gloomy. She put aside the burden of her grief and talked to 
her cousin of his family and of his ovs^n prospects, and she 
seemed warmly interested in his future success. It was but a 
sisterly interest, he knew, frankly expressed- as a sister’s might 
have been; yet it was sweet to him, nevertheless, and he ex- 
panded and talked freely of his plans and his hopes. 

I felt stifled in that old street,” he told her. “ A man 
must be very happy to endure life in a country town. ” 

“ But you are not unhappy, Theodore?” she interrupted, 
wonderingly. 

“ Unhappy — no, that would-be top much to say, perhaps. 
You know how fond I am of my father. I was glad to work 
with him, and to feel that I was useful to him; but that 
feeling was not enough to reconcile me to the monotony of 


lU 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


my days. A man who has home ties — a wife and children — 
may be satisfied in that narrow circle; but for a young man 
with his life before him it is no better than a prison. 

‘‘ 1 understand/^ said Juanita, eagerly. “ I can fully sym- 
pathize with you. I am very glad you are ambitious, Theo- 
dore; a man is worthless who is without ambition. And now 
tell me what you will do when you go to London. How will 
you begin 

“ 1 shall put up at the Inns of Court Hotel for a few days 
while I look about for a suitable set of chambers, and when I 
have found them and furnished them, and brought my books 
and belongings from Dorchester, 1 shall sit down and read law. 
I can read while 1 am qualifying for the Bar. 1 shall go on 
reading after I have qualified. My life will be to sit in Cham- 
bers and read law-books until some one brings me business. 
It hardly sounds like a brilliant career, does it?^^ 

“ All beginnings are hard,^^ she answered, gently. “ I sup- 
pose my father went through lust the same kind of drudgery 
when he began?^^ 

“ Well, yes, he must have gone upon the same lines, 1 
fancy. There is no royal road. 

“ And while you are studying law and waiting for briefs, 
will you have time to look afte^ my interests?'^ 

“ Yes, Juanita. Your interest shall be my first thought 
always. If it can make you happier to discover your hus- 
band^s murderer — 

‘‘Happier! It is the only thing that can reconcile me to 
the. burden of living.'’^ 

“If it is for your happiness, you need not fear that I shall 
ever relax in my endeavors. I may fail — indeed, 1 fear I must 
fail — but it shall not be for the lack of earnestness or persever- 
ance.^^ 

“ I knew that you would help me,^^ she said, fervently, 
holding out her hand to him across the table. 

Dinner was over, and they were alone, with the grapes and 
peaches of the Priory hot-houses, which were not even second 
to those of Cheriton, unheeded upon the table before them. 

“ Crane is in the house by this time, I dare say,^^ said 
Juanita, presently. “ Would you like to see him here, and 
shall I stay, or would you rather talk to him alone?"'*. 

“ I had better take him in .hand alone. It is always hard 
work to get straight answers out of that sort of man, and any 
cross-current distracts him. His thoughts are always ready to 
go off at a tangent. "" 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


115 

‘‘ He knows all about the squire's children. He can give 
you any particulars you want about them." 

The butler came into the room five minutes afterward with 
the coffee, and announced the bailiff’s arrival. 

Juanita rose at once, and left her cousin to receive Jasper 
Crane alone. 

He came into the room with rather a sheepish air. He was 
about sixty, vyoung-looking for his age, with a bald forehead 
and stubbly iron-gray hair, and a little bit of whisker on each 
sunburned cheek. He had the horsey look still, though he 
had long ceased to have anything to do with horses beyond 
buying and selling cart-horses for the home-farm, and occa- 
sionally exhibiting a prize animal in that line. He was a use- 
ful servant and a thoroughly honest man of the old-fashioned 
order. 

“ Mr. Crane, 1 want you to give me a little information 
about some old friends of yours. I have a little business in 
hand which indirectly concerns the Strang way family, and I 
want 'to be quite clear in my own mind as to how many are 
left of them, and where they are to be found. " 

Jasper Crane rubbed one of his stunted whiskers meditative- 
ly, aiid shook his head. 

“ There was never many of ’em to leave, sir," he said, 
grumpily, ‘‘and I don’t believe there’s any of ’em left any- 
wheres. They’ve all died off like rotten sheep. There seems 
to have been a curse upon ’em for the last hundred years. 
Nothing ever throve with them. Look at what Cheriton is 
now, and what it was in their time." 

“ I didn’t know it in their time, Mr. Crane." 

“ Ah, you’re not old enough; but your father knew the 
place. He did business for the old squire till things got too 
bad — mortgages, and accommodation bills, and overdrawn ac- 
counts at the bank, and such like, and your father washed his 
hands of the business— a long-headed gentleman, your father. 
He can tell you what Cheriton was like in the squire’s time." 

“ Why do you suppose they are all dead and gone?" 

“ Well, sir, first and foremost it’s fifteen years and more 
since I’ve heard of any of ’em, and the last I heard was about 
as bad as bad could be. ’’ 

“ What was that last report?’’ 

“ It was about Master Eeginald— that was the eldest son, 
him that was colonel of a lancer regiment, and m^arricd Lord 
Dangerfield’s youngest daughter. I remember the bonfires on 
the hills out by Studlands just as if it happened yesterday, but 


116 


THE DAY WILL COMH. 




it^s more than forty years ago, and 1 was a boy in tlie stables 
at fourteen shillings a week/^ 

“ Reginald, the eldest son, colonel of lancers, married Lord 
Dangerfield^s daughter — about 1840,^^ wrote Theodore in a 
pocket-book which he held _jeady for taking notes. 

What was it you heard about him?'^ he asked. 

“ Well, sir, it was Mr. De Lacy^s servant that told me. 
HeM been somewhere in the Soitth with his master where 
there was gambling — a place where the folks made a regular 
trade of it. It^s a wonderful climate, says Mr. De . Lacy^s 
man, and the gentry go there for their health, and very often 
finish by shooting themselves, and it seems Colonel Strangway 
was there. HeM come over from Corsica, which it seems was 
ill the neighborhood — where he^d left his poor wife all among 
brigands and savages — and he was at the tables day and night, 
and he had a wonderful run of luck, so that they called him 
the king of the place, and it was who but he! Howsoever the 
tide turned suddenly, and hc'began losing, and he lost his last 
sixpence^ in a manner of speaking, regular cleaned out, Mr. 
De Lacy^s man said; and by and by there comes another gen- 
tlemaiiT-a Jewish gentleman frQm Paris — rolling in money, 
and playing for the sake of the science, and able to hold out 
where another man must have given in; and in a week or two 
he was the king of the place, and the colonel was nowhere, 
just living on tick at the hotel, and borrowing a fiver from Mr. 
^De Lacy or any other old acquaintance whenever he had the 
chance, and making as much play as he could with two or 
three cart-wheels, where he used to play with hundred-franc 
pieces. And so it went on, and he cut up uncommon rough 
when anybody happened to ofiend him, and there was more 
than one row at the hotel or in the gardens — they donT allow 
no rows in the gambling-rooms— and just as the season was 
coming to an end the colonel went ofi one afternoon to catch 
the boat for Corsica. The boat was to start after dark from 
Nice, and there was a lot of traffic in the port, but not as 
much light as there ought to have been, and the colonel missed 
his footing in going from the quay to the boat, and went to 
the bottom like a plummet. Some people thought he did it 
on purpose, and that the one sensible thing he did w^as to 
make it look like accident, so as not to vitiate the insurance on 
his life, which Lord Dangerfield had kept paid ever since the 
colonel began to go to the bad. Anyhow he never came up 
again alive out of that water. His death was published in the 
papers ‘ Accidentally drowned at Nice/ I should never have 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


11 ? 


known the rights or the wrongs of it if Mr. De Lacy hadn^t 
happened to be visiting here soon afterwaM.^"" 

“ Did Colonel Strangway leave no children?^^ 

“ Neither chick nor child. 

“ Do you know if his widow is kill living?’^ 

‘‘No, sir. That is the last I ever heard of him or his.'’^ 

“ What about the younger brother 

“ I believe he must be dead too, though I canT give you 
chapter and verse. He never married, -didn’t Mr Frederick 
— not to my knowledge. He went on board a man-of-war be- 
fore he was fifteen, and at five-and-twenty he was a splendid 
officer, and as fine a young man as you need wish to see; but 
he was too fond of the bottle. China was the ruin of him, 
some folks said, and he got cburt-martialed out there not long 
after they sacked that there Summer Palace there was so much 
talk about; and then he contrived to pass into the mercantile 
marine, which was a come-down for a Strangway, and for a 
few years he was one of their finest officers, a regular dare- 
devil; could sail a ship faster and safer than any man in the 
service, used to bring home the spring pickings of tea, when 
tea wasn’t the cheap muck it is now, and when there weren’t 
no Suez Canal to spoil sport. “But he took to his old games 
again, and he got broke again, broke for drunkenness and in- 
subordination; and then he went and loafed and drank in Je^ 
sey — where, it’s my belief, he died some years ago.” ^ 

“ You have no positive information about his death?” 

“ 1 can’t say that I have. ” 

“ There was one daughter, I think?” 

“Yes, there was a daughter. Miss Eva. I taught her to 
ride. There wasn’t a finer horsewoman in Dorsetshire, but a 
devil of a temper — the real Strang way temper. I wasn’t sur- 
prised when I heard -she’d married badly; I wasn’t surprised 
when I heard she’d run away from her husband.” 

“ Did she leave any children?” 

“ No, not by him.” 

“ Bat afterward — do you know if there were children?” . 

“ I can’t say that 1 do. She was living in Boulogne when I 
last heard of her, and somebody told me afterward that she 
died there.” 

“ That’s vague. She may be living still.” 

“ I don’t think that’s likely. It’s more than twenty years 
— ay, it’s nearer twenty-five— since I heard of her death. She 
was not the kind of woman to hide her light under a bushel 
for a quarter of a century. If she were alive I feel sure we 
should have heard of her at Oheriton. Lord! how fond she 


118 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


was of the placo^ and how proud she was of her good looks and 
her old name, and how haughty afud overbearing she was 
with every other young woman that ever came in her way. 

“ She must have been a remarkably disagreeable young 2ier- 
son, I take it.’’ 

“ Well, not altogether, sir. She had a taking way when 
she wasn’t in her tantrums, and she was very good to the poor 
jieople about Choriton. They doated upon her. She never 
quarreled with them. It was with her father she got on worst. 
Those two never could hit it off. They were too much alike; 
and at last, when she was close upon seventeen, and a regular 
clipper, things got so bad that the squire packed off the gov- 
erness at an hour’s warning. She was too young and silly to 
manage such a j)upii as Miss Strangway, and it’s my belief 
she sided with her in all her mischief, and made things worse. 
He turned her out-of-doors neck and crop, and a week after- 
ward he took his daughter up to London and handed her over 
to an Epglish lady, who kept a finishing school somewhere 
abroad, at a place called Losun. ” 

‘‘At Lausanne, I think.” 

“ Yes, that was the name. She was to stay there for a 
year, and then she was to have another year’s schooling in 
Paris to finish her; but she never got to Paris, didn’t Miss 
Eva. She ran off frdm Lausanne with a lieutenant in a. 
marching regiment, and her father never saw her face again. 
He had no money to give her if she had married ever so well, 
but he took a pride in striking her name out of his will all 
the same.” 

“ What was her husband’s name?” 

“ Darcy — Tom Darcy. He was an Irishman, and I’ve heard 
he treated her very badly.” 

“ Do you know how long it was after her marriage that she 
left him?” 

“ I only know when I heard they were parted, and that waa 
six or seven years after she ran away from Lausanne.” 

“ How long was that , before the squire’s death and the sale 
of the estate?” 

“ Nearly ten years, I should say.” 

“ That makes it about thirty-four years ago?” 

“ Yes, that’s about it.” 

Theodore noted down the date in his book. He had heard 
all these things before now — loosely, and in a disjointed fash- 
ion — never having been keenly interested in the vicissitudes of 
the Strangways. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


119 


Who was the man who took her away from her hus- 
band?^’ 

‘‘ God knows,^^ said Jasper. “ None*t)f us at Oheriton ever 
heard. We fancied he must hq.ve been a Frenchman, for she 
was heard of afterward — a good many years afterward — at 
Boulogne. Our old vicar saw her there the year before he 
died — it mu^t have been as latd as sixty-four or sixty-five, I 
fancy — a wreck, he said. He wouldn^t have recognized her if 
she hadn’t spoken to him, and she had to tell him who she 
was. I heard him tell my old master all about it, one summer 
afternoon at the vicarage gate, when Sir Godfrey had driven 
over to see him. Yes, it must have been as late as sixty-five, 
I believe.” 

“ Five years after Lord Oheriton bought the estate?” 

“About that.” 

“ Do you remember the nam'e of Miss Strangway ’s govern- 
ess? Of course you do, though. ” 

Jasper Crane rubbed his iron-gray whisker with a puzzled 
air. 

“ My memory’s got to be like acorn-sieve of late years,” he 
said, “ but I ought to remember her name. She was at Cheri- 
ton over four years, and I only wish I had a guinea for every 
time I’ve sat behind her and Miss Strang way in the pony- 
j chaise. She was a light-hearted, good-tempered young 
woman, but she hadn’t bone enough for her work. She wasn’t 
up to Miss Strangway’s weight. Let me see now — what was 
that young woman’s name? — she was a good-looking girl, 
sandy, with a high color and a freckled skin. I ought to re- 
member.” 

“ Take a glass of claret, Mr. Crane, and take your time. 
The name will come back to you. Have you ever heard of the 
lady since she left Cheriton?” 

“ Never — she wasn’t likely to come back to this part of the 
world after having been turned out neck and crop as she was. 
What was the name of the man who saw the apple fall? — 
Newton — that was it, Sarah Newton. Miss Strangway used 
to xjall her Sally. 1 remember that. ” 

“ Ho you know where she came from, or what her people 
were?” 

“ She came from somewhere near London, and it’s my opin- 
ion her father kept a shop; but she was very close about her 
home and her relatives.” 

“ And she was young, you say?” 

“ Much too young for the place. She couldn’t have been 
five-and-twenty when she left; and a girl like Miss Strang way. 


120 THE DAY WILL COME. 

a motherless girl, wanted some one older and wiser to keep her 
in order. ^ 

“ Had the squire^sVife been long dead at that time?_^^ 

‘‘ She died before I went to service at Oheriton. Miss Eva 
couldn’t have been much above seven years old when she lost 
her mother.” 

Theodore asked no more questions, not seeing his way to ex- 
tracting any further information from the bailiff. He had 
been acquainted with most of these facts before, ©r had heard 
them talked about. The handsome daughter who ran away 
from a foreign school with a penniless Subaltern — the Strang- 
way temper, and the pitched battles between the spendthrift- 
father and the motherless, unmanageable girl — the lifelong 
breach, and then a life of poverty and death in a strange city, 
only vaguely known, yet put forward as a positive and estab- 
lished fact. He had heard all this; but the old servant’s 
recollcctiQiis helped him to tabulate his facts — helped him, 
too, with ihe name of the goVerness, which might be of some 
use in enabling him to trace the story of the last of the Strang- 
ways. 

“If there is any ground for Juanita’s theory, I think the 
man most likely to have done the deed would be the colonel 
of Jancers, supposed to be drowned at Nice. If I were by 
any means to discover that the story of the drowning was a 
mistake, and that the colonel is in the land of the living, 1 
should be inclined to adopt Juanita’s view of the murder.” 

He encouraged the bailiff to take a second glass of claret, 
and talked over local interests with him for ten minutes or so, 
while his dog-cart was being brought round; and then, Mr. 
Crane having withdrawn, he went to the drawing-room, where 
Juanita was sitting at work by a lamplit table, and wished 
her good-night. 

“ Did you find Jasper intelligent?” she asked, eagerly. 

“ Very intelligent.” 

“ And did you find out all you wanted from him?” 

“ Not quite all. He told me very little that I did not know 
before; but there were one or two facts that may be useful. 
Good-night, Nifca, good-night, and good-bye.” 

“ Not for long,” she answered. “ You will spend Christ- 
mas at home, of course. ” 

“ Yes, I shall go home for the Christmas week, I suppose.” 

“You will have something to tell me by that time, perhaps. 
You will be on the track.” 

“ Don’t be too sanguine, Nita. I will do my uttermost.” 

“lam sure you will. Ah, you don’t know how 1 trust you. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


121 


how I lean upon you. God bless you, Theodore. You are 
my strong^ rock. I, who never had a brother, turn to you as 
a sister might. If you can do this thing for me — if you can 
avenge his cruel death — < 

“ If — what then, Juanita?^^ he asked, paling suddenly, and 
his eyes flaming. 

“ I shall honoi — esteem you — as 1 have never done yet ; and 
ycu know 1 have always looked up to you, Theodore. God 
bless and prosper you. Good-night/^ 

Her speech, kind as it was, fell upon his enthusiasm like 
ice. He was holding both her hands, almost crushing them 
unawares in his veheflaence. Then his gripe loosened all at 
once, he bent his head, gently kissed those slender hands, 
muttered a husky good-night, and hurried from the room. 


CHAPTER X. 

“ The god of love— -aA, henedicite! 

How mighty and how great a lord is he!” 

A WEEK later Theodore Dalbrook was established in cham- 
bers on the second-floor of _!N‘o. 2 Ferret Court, Teillple. 

Ferret Court is one of the few places in the Temple which 
have not been improved and beautified out of knowledge 
within the last thirty years. The architect and the sanitary 
engineer have passed by on the other side, and have left Fer- 
ret Court to its original shabbiness. Its ceilings have not been 
elevated, or its windows widened, the early English stone front 
has not replaced the shabby old brick-work. Its time has not 
come. The rooms are small and low, the queer old closets 
where generations of lawyers have kept their goods and chat- 
tels are dark and redolent of mice. The staircases are rotten, 
the heavy old balusters are black with age, and the deep old 
window-seats are set in windows of the early Georgian era. 

The chambers suited Theodore, first because they were 
cheap, and next because the sitting-room, which was at the 
back, commanded a good view of the river. The bedroom 
was a tolerable size, and there was a dressing-room just big 
enough to hold bath and .boots opening out of it. He fur- 
nished the rooms comfortably, with solid old-fashioned furni- 
ture, partly consisting of surplus articles sent from the old 
house in Dorchester, and partly of his own purchases in Lon- 
don. The rooms were arranged with a sober taste which was 
by no means inartistic, and there was just enough bright color- 
iiig in the Algerian portieres and a few handsome pieces of 
Oriental crockery to relieve the dark tones of old oak and 


122 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


Spanish mahogany. Altogether the chambers had the estcl' 
lished look of a nest which was meant to last through wind and 
weather, a shelter in which a man expected to spend a good 
many years of his life. 

He had another reason for choosing those old rooms in Fer- 
ret Court in preference to chambers in any of those new and 
commodious houses in the courts that had been rebuilt of late 
years. It was in this house that James Dalbrook had begun 
his legal career; it was here, on the ground-floor below Theo- 
dore’s rooms, that the future Lord Oheriton had waited for 
briefs nearly forty years ago; and it was here that fame and 
fortune had first visited him, a shining apparition bringing 
brightness into the shabby old rooms, irradiating the gloomy 
old court with the glory of triumphant ambition, hopes sud- 
denly realized, the consciousness of victory. James Dalbrook 
had occcupied those dingy chambers fifteen years, and long 
after he , became a great ihan, and he had gone from them 
almost reluctantly to a spacious first-floor in King’s Bench 
Walk. He had enjoyed the reputation of a miser at that 
period of his life. He was never known to give a dinner to a 
friend, he lived in a close retirement which his enemies stig- 
matized as a hole-and-corner life, he was never seen at places 
of amusement, he never played cards, or bet upon a race. 
Socially he was unpopular. 

Theodore had taken all the preliminary steps, and had 
arranged to read with a well-known special pleader. He was 
thoroughly in earnest in his determination to succeed in this 
new line. He wanted to prove to his father that his abandon- 
ment of the Dorchester office was neither a caprice nor a folly. 
He was even more in earnest in his desire to keep his promise 
to his cousin Juanita. 

Almost his first act upon arriving in London had been to go 
to Scotland Yard in the hope of finding the detective who had 
been sent to Oheriton, and his inquiries there were so far suc- 
cessful that he was able to make an appointment with Mr. 
Churton for the next day but one. 

He had talked with Churton after the adjourned inquest, 
and had heard all that the professional intellect had to ofTer 
in the way of opinion at that time; but he thought it worth 
his while to find out if the detective’s ideas had taken any new 
development upon subsequent reflection, and al^ to. submit 
Juanita’s theory to professional consideration. He was not 
one of those amateurs who think that they are cleverer at a 
trade than the man who has served a long apprenticeship to it. 

‘‘ Have you thought anything more about the Oheriton mur - 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


123 


der since last July, Mr. Churton?^^ he asked; “or has your 
current work been too engrossing to give you time for thought?” 

“No, sir. IVe had plenty of other cases to think about, 
but Tm not likely to forget such' a case as that at Oheriton, a 
case in which I was worsted more completely than 1 have been 
in anything fpr the last ten years. IVe thought about it a 
good bit, 1 can assure you, Mr. Dalbrook. ” 

“ And do you see any new light?” 

“ No, sir. 1 stick pretty close to my original opinion. Sir 
Godfrey Carmichael was murdered by somebody that bore a 
grudge against him; and there^s a woman at the bottom 
of it.” 

“Why a woman? Might not a man’s hatred be deadly 
enough to lead to murder?” 

“Not unless he was egged on by a woman; or had been 
jilted by a woman; or was jealous of ,a woman; or thought he 
had a woman’s wrongs to avenge.” 

“ Is that what your experience teaches you, Mr. Ohurton?” 

“Yes, Mr. Dalbrook, that is what my experience teaches 
me.” 

“ And you think it was an enemy of Sir Godfrey’s who fired 
that shot?” 

“Ido.” 

“ Do you think the enemy was a woman — the hand that 
pulled the trigger a woman’s hand?” 

“ No, I do not. A woman couldn’t have been about the 
place without being remarked — or got clear ofi, as a man 
might.” 

“ There are the servants. Could the murderer be one of 
them?” 

“I don’t think so, sir. I’ve taken stock of them all — 
stables, lodges — everywhere. I never met with such a su- 
perior set of servants. The person at the west lodge is a lady 
bred and born, I should say. She gave me a good deal of in- 
formation about the household. A remarkably intelligent 
woman, and I know she is of my opinion as to the motive of 
the murder.” 

“ And yet, if I tell you that Sir Godfrey had not an enemy 
ill the world,” said Theodore, dwelling on the main point, 
and not particularly interested in what the highly intelligent 
Mrs. Porter might have said upon the subject. 

“ I should tell you, sir, that no njan can answer for another 
man. There is something in the lives of most of us that we 
would rather keep dark.” 

“ I don’t believe there was any dark spot in Sir Godfrey’s 

0 


m 


'THE BAY WILL COME. 


life. But what if there were an enemy of Lord Cheriton^s— 
a man who has been a judge is in a fair way to have made 
enemies — a foe vindictive enough to strike at him through his 
son-in-law, to smite him by destroying his daughter's happi- 
ness? She is his only child, remember, all his hopes and am-.. 
bitions center in her.^’ 

“ Well, Mr. Dalbrook, if there was such a man he would be 
an out-and-out blackguard. 

“ Yes, it would be a refinement of cruelty— a satanic hate; 
but such a man might exist. Remember the murder of Lord 
Mayo, one of the wisest and most beloved of Indians rulers. 
The wretch who killed him had never seen his face till the day 
of the murder. He thought himself unjustly condemned, 
and ho killed the man who represented the power which con- 
demned. him. Might not some wrong-headed Englishman 
have the same vindictive* fepling against an English judge ?''^ 

“ Yes, it is possible, no doubt. 

“ My cousin. Lady Carmichael, has another theory. 

Theodore explained the positions of Lord Cheriton and the 
race that preceded him as owners of the soil, and Juanita^s 
suspicion of some unknown member of the Strangway family; 
but the detective rejected this notion as unworthy of profes- 
sional consider-ation. 

“ It is like a young lady to get such an idea into her head,^' 
he said. “ If the estate had changed hands yesterday — well, 
even then I shouldn’t suspect the former owners of wanting to 
murder the purchaser’s son-in-law; but when you reflect that 
Lord Cheriton has been in peaceful possession of the property 
for more than twenty years, the idea isn’t worth a moment’s 
thought. What put such a fancy into the lady’s head, do you 
think, Mr. Dalbrook?” 

• “ Grief! She has brooded upon her loss until her sorrow 

has taken strange shapes. She thinks that it is her duty to 
help ii^ bringing her husband’s murderer to justice. She has 
racked her brains to discover the motive of that cruel crime. 
She has conjured up the image of incarnate hatred, and she 
calls that image by the name of Strangway. I have pledged 
myself to act upon this idea of hers as if it were inspiration, 
and the first part of my task will be to find out any surviving 
member of Squire Strangway’s family. He only left three 
children, so the task ought not to be impossible.” 

“ You don’t mean, sir, that you are going to act upon the 
young lady’s theory?” 

“ I do mean it, Mr. Churton, and I want you to help me; 
or, at any rate, to give me a lesson. How am I to begin?” 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


125 

He laid his facts before the detective, reading over the notes 
which he had elaborated from Jasper Crane^s reminiscences 
and from his own recolleqtion of ^various conversations in which 
the Strangways had figured. 

Churton listened attentively, nodded, or shook his head 
occasionally, and was master of every detail after that one 
hearing. 

Jersey is not a large place. I should go first for the son 
who is supposed to have died in Jersey, he said, when he 
had heard all. ‘‘ 1 should follow that line as far as it goes, 
and then I should hunt up the particulars of the colonels 
death, the gentleman who was drowned at Nice. If any 
Strangway had a hand in the business, it must have been one 
of those two, or the son of one of them. But I tell you plain- 
ly, Mr. Dalbrook, that I don^t put any faith in the poor lady^s 
notion — no, not that much,^^ said the detective, snapping his 
fingers contemptuously. 

“ Yet it was you yourself who first mooted the idea of a 
vendetta. 

“So it was; but I didn^t mean a vendetta on such grounds 
as that. An estate changes hands, and — after twenty years 
or more — the original holders try to murder the son-in-law of 
the purchaser! That won’t hold water, sir. There’s not 
enough human passion in it. I’ve had to study humanity, 
Mr. Dalbrook. It's been a part of my profession, and per- 
haps I’ve studied human nature closer than many a philoso- 
pher who sits in his library and writes a book about it. Now, 
there’s no human nature in that notion of Lady Carmichael’s. 
A man may be very savage because his spendthrift father has 
squandered" his estate, and he may feel savage with the lucky 
man who bought and developed that estate, and may envy 
him his enjoyment of it — but he won’t nurse his wrath for 
nearly a quarter of a century, and then give expression to hjs 
feelings all at once with a revolver. TJiat isn’t human nat- 
ure.” 

“ How about the exception to every rule? Might not this 
be an exceptional case?” 

“ It might, of course. There’s no truer saying than that 
fact is stranger than fiction; but for all tha^ this notion of 
Lady Carmichael’s is a young lady’s notion, and it belongs to 
fiction, and not to fact. I wouldn’t waste my time upon it, 
if I were you, Mr. Dalbrook.” 

“I must keep my promise, Mr. Churton. I am obliged to 
you for your plain speaking, and I am inclined to agree with 
you; but I have made a promise, and I must keep it.” 


m 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ Naturally, sir; and if in the course of your inquiries I 
can be of any use to you, I shall be very glad to co-operate/’ 

“ I rely on your help. Remember, there is a handsome re- 
ward to be earned by you if you can bring about the discovery 
of the murderer. My part in the search will count for noth- 
ing.” 

“ I understand, sir. That’s a stimulus, no doubt; but I 
hardly wanted it. When a case baffles me as this case has 
done, I would work day and night, and live on bread and 
water for a month, to get at the rights of it. Good-day. 
You’ve got my private address, and you can wire me any- 
where. ” 

“ You’re a Sussex man, Mr. Ohurton, I fancy?” 

“ Born in the village of Bramber.” 

Theodpre left Waterloo the following evening, and landed 
at St. Helier’s on the follo\^ing morning an hour or'^o before 
noon. He landed on the island as an absolute stranger, and 
with the vaguest idea of the work that lay before him, but 
with the determination to lose no time in beginning that work. 
He sent his valise to Brett’s Hotel, and he walked along the 
pier to the town, and inquired his way to the police-office. He 
was not going in quest of information about a member of the 
criminal classes; but the man he was hunting had been a no- 
torious drunkard, and it seemed to him that in a small settle- 
ment like St. Helier’s such a man would have been likely to 
attract the attention of the police at some s^tage of his down- 
ward career. 

The first official whom Theodore interrogated had never 
heard of the name of Strangway in the island; but an elderly 
inspector appearing presently upon the scene, and listening 
attentively to the conversation, made a suggestion. 

“You say the gentleman was fond of drink, sir, and in that 
case he’d be likely to have, his favorite public, where they’d 
know all about him. Now, there are not somiany taverns in 
St. Helier’s where a sea captain, and a broken-down gentle- 
man, would care to enjoy himself. He wouldn’t go to a low 
place, you see; and he wouldn’t fancy a swell place. It would 
be some house betwixt and between, whpre he’d be looked up 
to a bit — and it would be something of a seafaring place, you 
may be sure. There ain’t so many but what you could look 
in at ’em all, and ask a few questions, and get on the right 
track. 1 can give you the names of half a dozdn of . the 
likeliest. ” 

“ I shall be much obliged,” said Theodore. “ I think it’s 
a capital idea. ” 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


127 


The inspector wrote down the names of five taverns, tore 
the leaf out of Ijis pocket-book, and handed it to Mr. Dal- 
brook. < 

If you donT hear of him at one of those, 1 doubt if you ^11 
hear of him anywhere on the island,"" he said. “ Those houses 
are all near the pier and the quays. It won"t take you lon^ 
to go from one to the other. The Rose and Crown, that"s 
where the English pilots go; La Belle Alliance, that"s th 
French house, with a table d^hote. They"ve got a Yer}^ good 
name for their brand}^ and it"s a great place for broken-down 
gentlemen. You can get a good dinner for half a crown, with 
vin ordinaire inclu.dQd.” 

“I"ll try the Belle Alliance first,"" said ^Theodore. ‘‘It 
sounds likely."" 

“ Yes, I believe it"s about the likeliest,"" replied the in- 
spector. 

The Belle Alliance fronted the quay, and stood at the cor- 
ner of a shabby old street. There was a church close by, and 
a dingy old church-yard. Everything surrounding the Belle 
Alliance was shabby and faded, and its outlook on the dirty 
quay and the traffic of ugly wagons and uglier trucks, hogs- 
heads and lumber of all kinds, was depressing in the extreme. 
But the tavern itself had an ajr of smartness which an English 
tavern would hardly have had in the same circumstances. 
The interior was gay with much looking-glass, and a good 
deal of tarnished gilding. There were artificial flowers in 
sham silver vases on the tables, and there w^as a semicircular 
counter at one end of the restaurant, behind which a ponder- 
ous divinity, still youthful, but expansive, sat enthroned, her 
sleek, black hair elaborately dressed, her forehead ornamented 
with accroche-cmirSy and a cross of Jersey diamonds sparkling 
upon her swan-like throat, which was revealed by one of those 
open collars which the lower order of French ^voman loves. 
There was a row of small tables in front of the windows which 
looked toward the quay, and there was a long narrow table in 
the middle of the room, laid fur the table d’hote dejeuner; but 
as yet the room was empty, save of one young man and wom- 
an, of the tourist order, who were whispering and tittering 
over a cafe complet at one of the small tables furthest from 
the buffet. 

Theodore went straight to the front of the buffet, and 
saluted the lady enthroned there. 

“ Madame speaks English, no doubt?"" 

“ Oh, but yes, a leetle. I am live long time in Jairsey, 
where is more English as French peoples. "" 


m 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


After this sample speech it seemed to him that he might get 
on better with the lady in her native tongue, so he asked her 
for a cup of coffee in her own language, and stood at the 
counter while he drank it, and talked to her of indifferent 
matters, she nothing loath. 

“ You have lived a long time in Jersey, he said. “ Does 
that mean a long time in this house 

“ Except one year I have lived in this house all the time, 
nine years. 1 was only nineteen when I undertook the posi- 
tion of dame du comptoir, I could not have undertaken such 
a responsibility with a stranger, but the proprietor is my un- 
cle, and he knew how to be indulgent to my youth and inex- 
perience. 

‘‘ And then, a handsome face is always an attraction. You 
must have brought him good fortune, madame. 

“ He is kind enough to say so. He found it difficult to dis- 
pense with my services while I was absent, though he had a 
person from London who had been much admired at the 
Crystal Palace. 

“ And you, madame. Was it a feminine caprice, the desire 
for change, which made you abandon your uncle during that 
time?” 

“ I left him when I married,” replied the lady, with a pro- 
found sigh. I returned to him a heart-broken widow. 

“ Pray forgive me for having recalled the memory of your 
grief. I am a stranger in this place, and I am here on a some- 
what delicate mission. My very first visit is to this house, be- 
cause I knew I should find intelligence and sympathy here 
rather than among my own countrymen. I am fortunate in 
meeting with a lady who has occupied an important position 
at St. Helier^s for so long a period. I have strong reasons 
for wishing to discover the history of a gentleman who came 
to the island some years ago — I do not know how many — after 
having been unfortunate in the world. He was a naval man.” 

“ My poor husband was a naval man,” sighed the dame du 
comptdir, 

A pilot, no doubt, thought Theodore. ' 

Theodore's manner, which was even more flattering than 
his words, had made a favorable impression, and the lady was 
disposed to be confidential. She glanced at the clock, and 
was glad to see that it was only twenty minutes past twelve. 
There was time for a little further conversation with this 
handsome well-bred Englishman before the habitues of the 
Belle Alliance came trooping in for the half past twelve o'clock 


130 


THE DAY WILL COME. 

taUe d/liote. Already the atmosphere was odorous with fried 
sole and omelet mix fines herhes. 

“ The gentleman of whom I am in quest is reported to have 
died in the island,’’ he continued; “ but this is very likely to 
have been a false report, and it is quite possible that Captain 
Strang way may still — ” 

“ Captain Strang way,” echoed the woman, with an agitated 
air. 

“ Yes, I see you know all about him. You can help me to 
find him.” 

“ Know him!” cried the woman. “I should think I did 
know him, to my bitter cost. Captain Stangway was my hus- 
band. ” 

“ Good heavens!” ' ' 

“ He was my husband. The people will be here in a few 
minutes. If monsieur will do me the honor to step into my 
sitting-room, we can talk without interruption.” 

CHAPTER XL 

“ The comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no 
more tavern bills. ” 

The dame dn comptoir beckoned a waiter, and delegated 
some portion of her supreme authority to him for the next 
quarter of an hour. She constituted, as it were, a regency, 
and gave her subordinate command over her wine and liqueur 
bottles, her fine champagne, Bass and Guinness; and then she 
ushered Theodore Dalbrook into a very small sitting-room at 
the back of the counter, so small, indeed, that a large look- 
ing-glass, a porcelain stove, two arm-chairs, and one little 
table left hardly standing room. 

Theodore followed with a sense of bewilderment. He had 
told himself that the Island of Jersey was a world so small 
that he could not have much difficulty in tracing any man 
who had lived and died there within the last ten years; but 
accident had been kinder to him than he had hoped. 

The lady seated herself in one of the ruby velvet arm-chairs, 
and motioned him to the other. 

“ You have given me a shock, monsieur,” she said. My 
friends in the island know that my marriage was unfortunate, 
and they never mention my husband. He is forgotten as if 
he had never been. I sometimes fancy that year of my life 
was only a troubled dream. Even my name is unchanged. 1 
was called Mademoiselle Coralie before I married. I am called 
Madame Coralie now. ” 

5 


130 


THE DAY WILL COME, 


“ I am sorry to have caused you painful emotion, madame; 
but it is most important to me to trace the history of your 
husband^s later years, and I deem myself very fortunate in 
having found you/’ 

“ Is it about a property — a fortune left him, perhaps?” ex- 
claimed Coralie, with a sudden animation, her fine eyes light- 
ing up with hope. 

“ Alas, no. Fortune has nothing in reserve for your un- 
lucky husband.” 

“ Unlucky, indeed, but not so unlucky as I was in giving 
my heart to him. I knew that he was a drunkard, I knew 
that he had been turned out of the navy and out of the mer- 
cantile marine on account of that dreadful vice — ^but he — he 
\vas very fond of me, poor fellow, and he swore that he would 
never touch a glass of brandy again as long as he lived if I 
would consent to marry him. He did turn over a new leaf 
for a time, and kept himself sober and steady, and would hang 
over that counter for a whole evening talking to me, and take 
nothing but black coffee. 1 thought 1 could reform him. I 
thought it would be a grand thing to reform a man like that —a 
gi^nfcienian bred and born, a man whose father had been a 
great land-owner, and whose family name was one of the 
oldest in England. He was a gentleman in all his ways. He 
never foi*got himself, even when he had been drinking. He 
was a gentleman to the last. Such a fine-looking man, too. 
While he was courting me. and kept himself steady he got back 
his good looks. He looked ten years younger, and I was very 
}>roud of him the day we were married. He had taken a house 
f or me, a nice little house on the hill near the Jesuits’ College, 
with a pretty little garden, and I had furnished it out of my 
savings. I had saved a goodish bit since I came to Jersey, for 
my uncle is a generous man, and my situation here is a good 
one. I had over two hundred pounds in hand after I paid 
for the furniture — these chairs were in my drawing-room — 
and he hadn’t much more than the clothes he stood upright 
in, poor fellow. But I wouldn’t have minded that if he had 
only kept himself steady. 1 was prepared to work for him. I 
knew I should have to keep him. He was too much of a 
gentleman to be able to work except in his profession, and 
that was gone from him forever; so I knew it was incumbent 
on me to work for both, and I thought that by letting our 
drawing-room floor in the season, and by doing a little milli- 
nery all the year round — I’m a good milliner, you see, mon- 
sieur — I thought I could manage to keep a comfortable home. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


131 


without touching my two hundred pounds in the savings- 
bank.^^ 

“ You were a brave, unselfish girl to think so. 

“ Ah, sir, we are not selfish when we love. I was very fond 
of him, poor fellow. I had begun with pitying him, and then 
he was a thorough-bred gentleman — he was a vieille roclie, 
monsieur, and 1 have always admired the noblesse. I am no 
Republican, moi. And he had such winning ways when ho 
was sober, and he was not stupid as other men when he was 
drunk, only more brilliant — la tete montee — helas, comme il 
petillait esprit — but it was his brain that he was burning — ■ 
that was the fuel that made the light. But how is it you in- 
terest yourself in him, monsieur?^^ she asked, suddenly, fixing 
him with her sharp black eyes. “ You say it is not about 
property. You must have a motive, all the same.^^ 

have a motive, but my interest is not personal. I am 
acting for some one who now owns the Strang way estate, and 
who wishes to know what has become of the old family.^' 

“ What can it matter to any one?^^ then asked Mme. 
Coralie, suspiciously. “ They had lost all their money — of the 
land that had been theirs not an acre was left. What busi- 
ness was it of any one^s what became of them when they were 
driven from their birthplace? Oh, how my poor Frederick 
hated the race that had possessed itself of his estate! There 
was nothing too bad for them. When he was excited he 
would rave about them awfully — a beggarly lawyer, a black- 
hearted scoundrel, that is what he would call Lord — Lord 
Sherrington when he had been drinking. 

Theodore’s brow grew thoughtful. How strange this seemed 
— almost like a confirmation of J uanita’s superstitious horror 
of the banished race. Perhaps it was not unnatural that an 
unlucky spendthrift — ruined, disgraced — should hate the 
favorite of fortune who had ousted him; but not with a hate 
capable of murder, murder in cold blood, the murder of a man 
who had never injured him, even indirectly. 

Your husband has been dead some years, I conclude,” he 
said, presently. 

“ Three years and a half on the tenth of last month.” 

‘‘ And you had a troublesome time with him, I fear?” 

“ Trouble seems a light word for what 1 went through. It 
was like living in hell — there is no other word — the hell which 
a madman can make of all around him. For a few weeks we 
went on quietly; he seemed contented, and I was very happy, 
thinking J had cured him. I watched him as a cat watches a 
mouse, for fear he should go wrong again. He never went 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


1^3 

out without me, and at home I did all that a woman could to 
make much of him, studying him in everything, surrounding 
him with every little luxury I could afford, cooking dainty 
little meals for him, petting him as if he had been an idolized 
child. He seemed grateful for the first few weeks, and almost 
happy. Then I saw he was beginning to mope a little; he got 
low-spirited, and would sit over the fire and brood' — it was cut- 
ting March weather — and would moan over his blighted life 
and his own folly. ‘ If 1 had to begin over again,'’ he would 
sav, ‘ ah, it would be different, Cora, it would be all differ- 
ent." "" 

“ He was not unkind to you?"" 

‘‘No, he was never unkind, never. To the last, when he 
died raving mad with delirium tremens, he was always kind. 
It was seeing his madness and his ruin that made my trouble. 
He was violent sometimes, arid threatened to kill me, but that 
was only when he didn"t know me. I watched him moping 
for a week or so, and then one day, I was so unhappy at see- 
ing him fret, that I thought I would do anything to cheer 
him. I fancied he missed the company in this house, and the 
cards and dominoes and billiards, for before we were married 
he used to dine at the table d’hdte two or three times a week, 
and used to be in the cafe or in the billiard-room every 
night."" 

‘ ‘ How did he manage to live without a profession, and 
without ostensible means?"" 

Madame shrugged her shoulders. 

“ God knows. I think he used to write to his old friends 
— his brother officers in the navy or the merchant service — 
and he got a little from one and a little from another. He 
would borrow of any one. And there was a small legacy from 
his mother"s ,sister which came to him soon after he came to 
Jersey. That was all gone before I married him. He hadn"t 
a penny after he"d paid the marriage fees. Well, monsieur, 
seeing him so downhearted I proposed that he should go down 
to the Belle Alliance and have a game of billiards and see his 
old friends. ‘ You needn"t take any money," I said, ‘ my un- 
cle will treat you hospitably." He seemed pleased at the idea, 
and he promised to be home early ; but just as he was leaving 
the house he turned back and said there was a little bill of 
thirty shillings he owed to a boot-maker in the street round 
the corner, and he didn"t like to pass the man"s shop without 
paying. AYould I let him have the money? It was the first 
money he"d asked me for since we were married, and I hadn"t 
the heart to say no, so I went to my little cash-box and took 


133 


. THE HAT WILL COME. 

out three half sovereigns. I told him that the money meant 
a week’s housekeeping. ‘ I give you nice little dinners, don’t 
I, Fred?’ 1 said, ‘ but you’ve no idea how economical I am.’ 
He laughed and kissed me, and said he hated economy, and 
wished he had a fortune for my sake, and he went down the 
street whistling. AVell, sir, perhaps you can guess what hap- 
pened. ^ He came home at three o’clock next morning mad 
with drink, and then 1 knew he was not to he cured. I went 
on trying all the same, though, till the last, and I lived the 
life of a soul in torment; and I was fond of him to the last, 
and saw him killing himself inch by inch, and saw him die a 
dreadful death, one year and three days after our wedding- 
day. He spent every penny I had in the world, and my uncle 
helped us when that was gone, and I came back to this house 
after his funeral a broken-hearted woman. All my furniture 
,, which I’d worked for was sold to' pay the rent and the doctors 
and the undertaker. 1 just saved the furniture in this room, 
and that is all that is left of four hundred and seventy pounds 
and of my married life.” 

“ You were indeed the victim of a generous and confiding 
heart.” 

“ I was fond of him to the last, monsieur, and I forgave him 
all my sufferings; but let no woman that lives ever marry a 
drunkard with the hope of reforming him.” 

“ Were you quite alone in your martyrdom; had your hus- 
band no relatives left to help him on his dying bed?” 

“Hot one. He told me he was the last of his race. He 
-must have distant relations, I suppose; but his elder brother 
was dead, and his sister. ” 

“You are sure his brother was dead?” 

“ Yes; he fell into the water at Nice on a dark evening, 
when he was going on board the steamer for Corsica. I have 
got the paper with the account of his death.” 

“Will you show me that paper, and any other documents re- 
lating to your husband’s family? I know I have no right to 
ask such a favor; but all 1 can say is that I shall be very 
grateful if you will so far oblige me. ” 

The taUe d’hote was in full swing in the adjoining room, as 
testified by the clattering of plates and the jingie of knives and 
forks, and a subdued rumble as of a good many confidential 
conversations carried on simultaneously. 

“You want to see my poor Fred’s private papers,” said the 
widow, meditatively. “That’s a good deal to ask; not that 
there are any secrets in them that can hurt anyl) 0 (ly above 
ground. The colonel is dead, and his sister. My husband 


134 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


was the last. But 1 can^t understand why anybody should 
want to pry into a dead man^s papers, unless there's property 
hanging to them. " 

She looked at Theodore suspiciously, as if she could not 
divest herself of the idea of a fortune having turned up some- 
how unexpectedly; a fortune to which her dead husband was 
entitled. 

‘‘ There is no property, I assure you. It is a question of 
sentiment, not of money." 

“ You're a lawyer, I suppose?" said Coralie, still suspi- 
ciously. 

She supposed that it was only lawyers who went about pry- 
ing into the affairs of the dead. 

“I am a lawyer; but the business which brings me to Jer- 
sey is not law business." 

“ Well, I don't see how any harm can come to me through 
your seeing my husband's appers. There's not many to see — a 
few letters from the colonel, and two or three from a lawyer 
about the legacy, and a dozen or so from old friends, refusing 
or sending him money. You've spoken kindly to me, and I've 
felt that you could sympathize with me, though you're a 
stranger — so — well — you may see his letters, though it hurts 
me to touch anything that belonged to him, le pauvre homme.” 

She took a bunch of keys from her pocket, unlocked the 
little secretaire, and from one of the drawers produced a bun- 
dle of old letters and cuttings from newspapers, which she 
handed to Theodore Dalbrook, and then seated herself opposite 
to him, planted her elbows on the table, and watched him 
while he read, keenly on the alert for any revelation of his 
purpose which might escape him in the course of his reading. 
She had not altogether relinquished that idea of an inheritance, 
or legacy— property of some kind — involved in this endeavor 
to trace a dead man's history. The explanation which Theo- 
dore had given had not convinced her. He had confessed 
himself a lawyer, and that was in itself enough to make her 
doubt him. 

The cuttings from old newspapers belonged to the days 
when Frederick Strangway had commanded a war ship, to the 
days when he fought in the Chinese war. Some of them re- 
corded the honor he had won for himself at different stages of 
his career, and it was only natural that these should have been 
carefully preserved by him in all his wanderings. But there 
were other cuttings — the report of the court-martial that broke 
him — the trial in which he stood accused of having risked the 
loss of his ship with all hands aboard by his dissolute habits — 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


135 


a shameful and painful story. This had been kept by one of 
those strange perversities of the human mind which makes a 
man secrete and treasure documents which must wring his 
heart and bow his head with shame every time he looks at 
them. There were other extracts of a like shameful kind — re- 
ports of street rows, two cases of drunken asault in San Fran- 
cisco, one of a fight in Sydney harbor. He had kept them all 
as if they had been words of praise and honor. 

The letters were most of them trivial — letters from brother 
ofiScers of the past — “ very sorry to hear of his misfortunes,^^ 
“ regret inability to do more than the inclosed small check, 

‘‘ the numerous claims upon my purse render it impossible for 
me to grant the loan requested,-’^ the usual variations upon the . 
old tune in which a heavily taxed pater familias fences with 
the appeal of an unlucky acquaintance. They were such let- 
ters as are left by the portmanteauful among the effects of the* 
man who has lost self-respect, or for whom the world had been 
too hard. 

Theodore put aside all the correspondence after a brief 
glance, and there remained only four letters in the same 
strong, resolute hand, the hand of Reginald Strangway. 

The first in date was written on Army and Navy Club paper, 
and was addressed to Captain Strangway, R. N., H. M. ship 
“ Cobra, Hong Kong: 

‘^My deae Fred, — Sorry to leave your letter so long 
unanswered, but have been bothered about a good many 
things. My wife has been’ out of health for nearly a year. 
The doctors fear her chest is affected, and tell me I ought to get 
her away from England before the winter. As things have 
been going very badly with me for a long time I shall not be 
soriy to cut this beastly town, where the men who have made 
their money, God knows how, are now. upon the crest of the 
wave, and by their reckless expenditure have made it impos- 
sible for a man of small means to live in London — if he wants 
to live like a gentleman. Everything is twice as dear as it 
used to be when I was a subaltern. My wife and I are pigging 
in two rooms on the second-floor in Jermyn Street. 1 live at 
my club, and she lives on her relatives, so that we don’’t often 
have to sit down to a lodging-house dinner of burned soles and 
greasy chops, but the whole business is wretched. She has to 
go to* parties in a four-wheeled cab, and I can hardly afford 
the risk of a rubber. So I shall be uncommonly glad to cut it 
all, and settle in some out-of-the-way place where we can live 
cheap, and where the climate will suit Millicent. 


136 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ My first was Algiers, but things are still rather un- 
settled there, as you know; and Lambton, of the Guards, has 
been shooting in Corsica lately, and came home with a glow- 
ing account of the climate and the cheapness of the inns, 
which are roughish, but clean and fairly comfortable; so 1 have 
determined on Corsica. We shall be within a day^s sail of 
Nice, so not utterly out of reach of civilization, and we can 
live there how we like, without entertaining a mortal, and wear 
out our old clothes. Millicent, who is fond of novelty, is in 
love with the notion, and Darigerfield has behaved very well to 
her, promising her an extra hundred a year if we will live 
quietly and keep out of debt, which, considering he is as poor 
as Job, is not so bad. As for my creditors, they are pretty 
quiet since I got Aunt BelCs legacy, part of which I divided 
among ^em as a sop to Cerberus, and they^ll have to be still 
♦ quieter when I^m settled in Corsica. 

‘‘ Of course you heard of that wetched woman’s kicking 
over the traces altogether at last. God knows what will be- 
come of her. I believe she had been carrying on rather badly 
for some time before Tom found out anything. You know 
what an ass he is. However, he got hold of a letter one even- 
ing — met the postman at the door, and took her letters along 
with his own, and didn’t like the look of one and opened it; 
and then there was an infernal row, and she just put on her 
bonnet and' shawl, walked out of the house, and called a cab 
and drove oft. He followed in another cab, but it was a foggy 
night, and he lost her before she’d gone far. They were in 
lodgings in Essex Street, and it isn’t easy for one cab to chase 
another in the Strand on a foggy evening. She never -went 
back to him, and he went all over London denouncing her, 
naming first one man and then another, but without any 
definite idea as to who the real man was. The letter was ynly 
a couple of sentences in Italian, which Tom only knew by 
sight; but he could see it was an appointment at a theater, 
for the theater and hour were named. She snatched the letter 
out of his hand while they were quarreling, he told me, and 
chucked it into the fire, so he hasn’t even the man’s hand- 
writing as evidence against him. It was a hand he had never 
seen before, he says. However, if he wants to find her no 
doubt he can do so, if he takes the trouble. I am sorry she 
should disgrace her family, and of course my wife feels the 
scandal uncommonly hard upon her, I can’t say that I feel 
any pity for Tom Darcy. She had led a wetched life with 
him ever since he sold out, and I don’t much wonder at her 
being deuced glad to leave him. As it’s Tom’s business to 


THE DAY WILL COME. 137 

shoot her lover, and not mine, I sha^n^t mix myself up in the 
affair; and as for her, well, she has made her bed — 

There was more in the letter, but the rest was of no interest 
to Theodore. 

The letter was dated January 3, 1851. 

Three of the remaining letters were from Corsica, and con- 
tained nothing of any significance. A fourth was written at 
Monte Carlo, in answer to an appeal for money, and the date 
was twelve years later than the first. It was a gloomy letter, 
the letter of a ruined man, who had drunk the cup of disap- 
appointment to the dregs. 

“To ask me for help seems like a ghastly joke on your 
part. Whatever your troubles may be I fancy my lookout is 
darker than yours. My wife and 1 have vegetated on that 
accursed island for just a dozen years— it seems like a life-time 
to look back upon. We just had enough to live upon while 
my father was alive, for, bad as things were at Cheritou, he 
contrived to send me something. Now that he is gone, and 
the estate has been sold by the mortgagees, there is nothing 
left for me — and we have been living for the last two years 
upon the pittance my poor Milly gets from her father. What- 
ever your cares may be you donT know what it is to have a 
sick wife, whose condition requires every luxury and indul- 
gence, and to have barely enough for bread and cheese. If 
you were to see the house wer live in, the tiled floors, and the 
dilapidated furniture, and the windows that wonT shut, and 
the shutters that wonT keep to, and our two Corsican servants, 
who look like a brace of savages, though they are good creat- 
ures in the main, you would be the last man to howl about 
your own troubles to me. 

“ I have been here a month, and with my usual diabolical 
luck. I am going home to-morrow — though perhaps I should 
be wiser if I went up into the hills behind Monaco and put a 
bullet through my brains. Millicent would be no worse off, 
God help her, for she is entirely dependent on her father, and 
I am only an incubus; but she might think herself worse off, 
poor soul! so I suppose I had better go home. 

“ What am I thinking about? I canT afford to take refuge 
in the suicide^s haven. My life is insured in the Imperial for 
£3,000, and poor old Dangerfield has been paying the premium 
ever since I married his daughter. It would be hard upon him 
if I shot myself. 

This was the last letter, and it was indorsed by the brothei-’s 
hand. 


138 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


Reginald’s last letter! I read in the ‘ Times ’ newspaper of 
his being drowned at Nice ten days afterward.” 

Theodore made a note of the dates of these letters, and the 
names of the insurance oflBce. Provided with these data, it 
would be easy for him to verify the fact of Colonel Strangway’s 
death, and thus bring the history of the two sons of old Squire 
Strangway to the dismal close in dust and darkness. 

And thus would be answered Juanita’s strange suspicion of 
the house of Strangway, answered with an unanswerable an- 
swer. Who can argue with Death? Is not that, at least, the 
end of all things — the road that leads no whither? 

There remained for him only the task of tracing the erring 
daughter to her last resting-place. This would doubtless be 
more difficult, as a runaway wife living under a false name, 
and in all probability going from place to place, was likely to 
have left but faint and uncertain indications of her existence. 
But the first part of his task had been almost too easy. He 
felt that he could take no credit for what he had done, could 
expect no gratitude from J uanita. 

lie thanked Mrs. Strangway — alias Mme. Coralie — for her 
politeness, and asked to allowed to offer her a ten-pound 
note as a trifling acknowledgment of the favor she had done 
him. She promptly accepted this offering, and was only the 
more convinced that there was “ property ” involved in the 
Iaw5^er’s researches. 

‘ ‘ If there is anything to come to me from any of his rela- 
tions, I hope nobody will try to keep me out of it,” she said. 
“ I hope they will remember that I gave him my last shilling, 
and nursed him when there wasn’t many would have stayed in 
the room with him. ” 

Theodore reiterated his assurance that no question of money 
or inheritance was involved in his mission to the island, and 
then bade the captain’s widow a respectful adieu, and threaded 
his way through the avenues of tables to the door, and out of 
the garlic-^sharged atmosphere into the fresh autumnal air. 

He stayed one night in Jersey, and left at eleven o’clock 
next morning on board the Fanny,” and slept in his cham- 
bers in Ferret Court, after having written a long letter to 
Juanita, with a full account of all that he had learned from 
the lips of the widow, and from the letters of the dead. 

‘‘ I do not surrender my hope of finding the murderer,^’ he 
finally wrote, “but you must now agree with me that I must 
look elsewhere than among the remnants of the Strangwiiy 
race. They can prove an unanswerable alibi — the grave. ” 

He went to the office of the Imperial next morning, saw the 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


139 


secretary, and ascertained that the amount of the poiicy upon 
Colonel Strang way’s life had been paid to Lady Millicent 
Strangway, his widow, in April, 1863, after the directors had 
received indisputable evidence of his death. 

“I remember the case perfectly,” said the secretary. ‘‘ The 
circumstances were peculiar, and there was a suspicion of 
suicide, as the man had just left Monte Carlo, and was known 
to have lost his last napoleon, after a most extraordinary run 
of luck. There was some idea of disputing the claim; but if 
he did make away with himself he had contrived to do it so 
cleverly that it would have been uncommonly diflicult to prove 
that his death was not an accident — more particularly as Lord 
Dangerfield brought an action against the steamboat company 
for willful negligence in regard to their gangway and deficient 
lighting. The policy was an old one, too, and so it was de- 
cided not to litigate.” 

‘ ‘ There could be no doubt as to the identity of the man who 
was drowned at Nice, 1 conclude?” 

“ No; the question of identity was carefully gone into. 
Lord Dangerfield happened to be wintering at Cannes that 
year, and he heard of his son-in-law’s death in time to go over 
and identify the body before it was coffined. You know how 
quickly burial follows death in that part of the world, and 
there would have been no possibility of the widow getting over 
from Ajaccio before the funeral. We had Lord Dangerfield’s 
declaration that the body he saw at Nice was the body of 
Colonel Strangway, and we paid the £3,000 on that evidence. 
We have never had any reason to suspect error or foul play.” 


CHAPTER XII. 

“ Thou takest not away, O Death! 

Thou strikest— absence perisheth, 

Indifference is no more; 

The future brightens on our sight; 

For on the past hath fallen a light 
That tempts us to adore.” 

While Juanita clung with feverish intensity to the hope of 
discovering her husband’s murderer. Lord Cheriton seemed to. 
be gradually resigning himself to the idea that the crime would 
go to swell the long list of undiscovered murders which he 
could recall within his own experience of life— crimes which 
had kept society expectant and on the alert for a month, and 
which had stimulated the police to unwonted exertions, finally 
to sink into oblivion, or to be occasionally cited as an example 
of the mysteriousness of human history. 


140 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


He had offered a large reward, he had brought all his own 
trained intelligence to bear upon the subject; he had thought 
and brooded upon it by day and by night, and the result had 
been nil. A hand had been stretched out of the darkness to 
slay an unoffending young man, in whose life his daughter’s 
happiness had been bound up. That was the whole history of 
the murder. A shot heard in the night, a bullet fired out of 
the darkness with most true and fatal aim. 

Not one indication, not one suggestive fact had been dis- 
covered since the night of the murder. 

“ It is hopeless,” said Lord Cheriton^ talking over the 
calamity with Mr. Scarsdale, the Vicar of Cheriton and 'J’est- 
wick, adjoining parishes; “ the crime and the motive of the 
crime are alike inscrutable. If one could imagine a reason for 
the act it might be easier to get upon the track of the mur- 
derer; but there is no reason that I can conceive for such a 
deed. It has been suggested to me that Sir Godfrey might 
have had a secret enemy — that his life might not have been as 
spotless as we think — ” 

“ I will answer for it that he was never guilty of a dishonor- 
able action, that he provoked no man’s hatred by any unworthy 
act,” interrupted the vicar, warmly. He had been curate at 
Milbrook before he got the Cheriton living, and had lived at 
the Priory and prepared Godfrey Carmichael for Eton, so he 
claimed the right to vouch for the honor of the dead. “ There 
never was a whiter soiil in mortal clay,” he said. 

‘‘ I am inclined to estimate his character almost as highly as 
you,” replied Lord Cheriton, deliberately, “ yet the straightest 
walker may make .one false step — and there may have been 
some unfortunate entanglement at the university or in 
London — ” 

‘ ‘ I will never believe it. He may have been tempted — he 
may have yielded to temptation — but if he erred, be sure he 
atoned for his error to the uttermost of his power.” 

There are errors — seeming light to the steps that stumble 
> — which can not be atoned for. ” 

“ There was no such error in his youth. I looked in his 
face on his wedding-day. Lord Cheriton, and it was the face of 
a man of unblemished life — a man who need fear no ghost out 
of the dead past.” 

“ Well, you are right, I believe— and in that case the mur- 
der is motiveless — the murder of a madman — a madmau so 
profoundly artful in his lunacy as to escape every eye. By 
Heaven, I wish we had the old way of hunting such a quarry— 
and that a leash of blood-hounds could have been set loose upon 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


141 


his track within an hour of the murder. They would have 
hunted him down — their instinct would have found him skulk- 
ing and shivering in his lair; and we should have needed no 
astute detective primed with all the traditions of Scotland 
Yard. It would have been swift, sudden justice — blood for 
bloof^^ 

His dark-gray eyes shone with an angry light as he walked 
up and down the spacious floor of the library, while the vicar 
stood in front of the fire, looking gravely into his clerical hat, 
and without any suggestion to offer. 

“ I hope Lady Carmichael is recovering her spirits,^’ he 
said, feebly, after a pause. 

“ She is not any happier than she was when her loss was a 
week old; but she keeps up in a wonderful way. I believe she 
is sustained by some wild notion that the murderer will be 
found — that she will live to see her husband^s death avenged. 
I doubt if at present she has any other interest in life. 

But let us hope she will be cheered by the society of her 
husband^s people. I hear that the Morningsides and the 
Grenvilles are to be at the Priory in November.^’’ 

“ Indeed! I have heard nothing about it. ’^ 

“ I was at Swanage yesterday afternoon, and took tea with 
Lady Jane. She was full of praises of Lady CarmichaePs 
goodness, and her desire that all things at the Priory might be 
just as they had been in Sir Godfrey’s life-time. His brothers- 
in-law used to be invited for the shooting in November, and 
they were to be invited this year, on condition that Lady Jane 
would help to entertain them, and Lady Jane has consented 
gladly. So there will be a large family party at the Priory 
on this side of Christmas,” concluded the vicar. 

‘‘lam glad to hear it,” said Lord Cheriton. “ Anything 
is better for her than solitude; any occupation, if it be only 
revising a bill of fare, or listening to feminine twaddle, is 
better for her than idleness. ” 

“ Yes, there will be a houseful,” pursued the vicar, “ Mrs.) 
Grenville takes her nursery with her wherever she goes.” 

“ And Mrs. Morningside is delighted to leave hers behind 
her.” 

“ Yes, she is one of those mothers who are always telling 
people what paragons of nurses Providence has provided for 
their darlings, or how admirably their children are being 
brought up by a model governess,” said the vicar, who was 
severe upon other people’s neglect of duty. “ By the bye, 
talking of mothers, I believe I saw Mrs. Porter’s daughter the 
other day while I was in town.”’ 


U2 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


‘‘ You believe you saw her?’^ 

“ Yes, I am not certain. A face flashed past me in the 
street one night, and when the face was gone it came upon 
me that it was Mercy Porter^s eyes that looked at me for an 
instant in the gaslight. I was in one of those crowded new 
neighborhoods on the Surrey side of Battersea Bridge, a wilder- 
ness of shabby streets. I had been to hear Vansittart preach a 
mission sermon at a church near Wandsworth, and I was walk- 
ing back to Chelsea. It was late on a Saturday night, and the 
road was full of costermonger’s barrows, and the pavement 
was crowded with working people doing their marketing. I 
tried to overtake the girl whose face had startled me, but it 
was no use. She had melted in the crowd. I went back the 
whole length of the street, hoping I might find her in front of 
one of the coster’s stalls; but she must have turned into one 
of the numerous side streets, and it was hopeless to hunt for 
her there. Yet I should have been very glad to get hold of 
her.” 

‘‘ Is she much changed?” 

‘‘ Changed ! Yes. It was only the ghost of Mercy Porter 
that I saw. I should not have known her but for her eyes. 
She had fine eyes, do you remember, and with a great deal of 
expression in them. I think I should be safe in swearing to 
Mercy Porter’s eyes. ” 

“ Did she look poor or ill?” 

“ She looked both— but the illness might be only hunger. 
She had that wan, pinched look one sees in the faces of the 
London poor, especially in the women’s faces.” 

“ Have you told her mother?” 

‘‘ No, I came to the conclusion that it would be giving the 
poor soul useless pain to tell her anything — having so little to 
tell. ^ She knew years ago that Colonel Tremaine had deserted 
his victim, and that the girl had dropped through — God knows 
where! — into the abyss that swallows up handsome young 
women who begin their career in West End lodgings and a 
hired brougham. If the mother were to go in quest of her, and 
bring her home here, it might be only to bring shame and 
misery upon her declining years. The creature may have 
fallen too low for the possibility of reformation, and the 
mother’s last hours would be darkened by her sin. I would 
do much to rescue her— but I would rather try to save her 
through a stranger’s help than by the mother’s intervention. ” 

Lord Cheriton continued his pacing to and fro, and did not 
appear particularly interested in the case of Mercy Porter. 
He had been much troubled by her flight from Cheriton, for 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


143 


the seducer was his guest and his own familiar friend, and he 
had felt himself in somewise to blame for having brought such 
a man to Cheriton. He told himself that he would not have 
had Tremaine inside his house had his own .daughter been out 
of the school-room; and yet he had allowed the man to cross 
the path of the widow^s only child, and to bring desolation and 
sorrow upon the woman whose life he had in somewise taken 
under his protection. 

‘‘ There are people whose mission it is to hunt out that kind 
of misery,^^ he said, after an interval of silence. “ I hope one 
of these good women will rescue Mercy Porter. I think you 
have been wise in saying nothing to the mother. She has got 
over her trouble, and anything she might hear about the girl 
would only be a reopening of old wounds. 

“ She is a wonderful woman,^^ replied the vicar. “ I never 
saw such grief as hers when the girl ran away, and yet within 
a few months she has calmed down into the placid personage 
she has been ever since. She is a woman of very powerful 
mind. I sometimes wonder that even at her age she can 
content herself with the monotonous life she leads in that 
cottage.'’^ 

“ Oh, she liked the place, I believe, and the life suits her,-’^ 
said Lord Cheriton, carelessly. “ She had seen a good deal of 
trouble before she came here, and this was a quiet haven for 
her after the storms of life. I am very sorry the daughter 
went wrong, he added, gravely, and with a sudden cloud 
upon his face. was a bitter blow, and I shall never 

forgive myself for having brought that scoundrel Tremaine 
here. 

“ He is dead, is he not?^^ 

“ Yes, he was killed in Afghanistan six years ago. He was 
a good soldier, though he was a bad man. 1 dare say he made 
his being ordered off to India an excuse for leaving Mercy — left 
her with a trifle of money, perhaps, and a promise of further 
remittances, and then let her drift. I told my lawyer to keep 
his eye upon her, if possible, and to establish her in some re- 
spectable calling if ever he saw the chance of doing so; but 
she eluded him somehow, as you know.^^ 

Yes, you told me what you had done. It was like you to 
think even of so remote a claim upon your generosity.'’^ 

“ Oh, she belonged to Cheriton. I have cultivated the 
patriarchal feeling as much as I can. All who live upon my 
land are under my protection. 

“ Lady Cheriton has been a good friend to Mrs. Porter, 
too.'’" 


144 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


“ My wife is always kiud/^ 

Juanita accepted her cousin^s account of what he had heard 
and read at St. Helier’s, as the closing of his researches in the 
history of the Strangways. The sister^s death in a shabby 
exile remained to be traced, but there was no light to be ex- 
pected there; and Juanita felt that she must now submit to 
surrender her superstition about that evil race. It was not 
from them the blow had come. The murderer had to be 
hunted for in a wider range, and the quest would be more 
difficult than she had thought. She was not the less intent 
upon discovery because of this difficulty. 

“ I. have all my life before me, she told herself, “ and I 
have nothing to live for but to see his murderer punished. 

It had been Juanita^s especial desire that the Morningsides 
and the Grenvilles should be invited to the Priory just as they 
had been in Sir Godfrey's life-time — that all tlie habits of the 
household should be as he had willed them when his bodily 
presence was there among them, and he was now, in the spirit, 
to Juanita^s imagination. She thought of him every hour of 
the day, and in all things deferred to his opinions and ideas, 
shaping the whole course of her life to please him who was 
lying in that dark resting-place where there is neither pain 
nor pleasure. 

When November came, however, and with it the troop of 
Grenvilles, nurses and nursery governesses, and the Morning- 
sides with valet and maid, it seemed to J uanita as if the wild 
companions of Com us or a contingent from Bedlam had in- 
vaded the sober old -Priory. Those loud voices in- the hall, 
that perpetual running up and down and talking and laughing 
upon the staircase; the everlasting opening and shutting of 
doors; the roll of carriage wheels driving up to the door a 
dozen times in a day; the bustle and fuss and commotion 
which two cheerful families in rude health can contrive to 
make in a house where they feel themselves perfectly at home 
— all these things were agonizing to the mourner who had lived 
in silence and shadow from the hour of her loss until now. 
Happily, however. Lady Jane was there to take all the burden 
ofi those weary shoulders; and Lady Jane in the character of 
a grandmother was in her very fittest sphere. Between her 
ladyship and the housekeeper all arrangements were made, 
and every detail was attended to without indicting the slightest 
trouble upon Juanita. 

“You shall see just as little of them all as you like, dear,^’ 
she said. “ You can breakfast and lunch in your morning- 
room, and just come down to dinner when you feel equal to 


THE HAT WILL COME. 


145 


being with us, and then you will see the darlings at dessert. 1 
know they will cheer you, with their pretty little ways. Such 
loving pets as they are too, and so full of intelligence. Did I 
tell you what Johnnie said yesterday at luncii?^^ 

“ Yes, dear Lady Jane, you did tell me; it was very funny,^^ 
replied Juanita, with a faint smile. 

She could not tell that adoring grandmother that the chil- 
dren were a burden to her, and that those intelligent speeches 
and delightful mispronunciations of polysyllabic words which 
convulsed parents and grandparent seemed to add perceptibly 
to her own gloom. She pretended to be interested in Johnnie, 
and she martyrized herself every afternoon by showing Susie 
picture-books and explaining the pictures, or by telling Lucy 
her favorite Hans Andersen story, which never palled upon 
that young listener. 

“Don’t you think you would like a new one?” Juanita 
would ask. 

“Ho, no, not a new one — the same please. I want ‘ The 
Proud Darning-Needle.’ ” 

So the adventures of “ The Proud Darning-Needle ” had to 
be read or related as the case might be. 

Juanita took Lady Jane’s advice and spent the greater part 
of every day in the morning- room or library,, that room which 
had been Godfrey’s den. It was further from the staircase 
than any other sitting-room, and the clatter and the shrill 
voices were somewhat modified by distance. The house party 
amused themselves after their hearts’ desire, and worked the 
horses with the true metropolitan feeling that a horse is an 
animal designed for locomotion, and that he can’t have too 
much of it. Lady Jane was the most indulgent of deputy 
mistresses, and spent all breakfast-time in cutting sandwiches 
of a particularly dainty kind Ttor her sons-in-law, so that they 
might be sustained between the luxurious home breakfast at 
nine and the copious luncheon with which the cart met the 
shooters somewhere at half past one. When the shooters had 
started there were the little Grenvilles to slave for; and Lady 
Jane spent another half hour in seeing them off upon their 
morning constitutional, Lucy on her Shetland, and Johnnie, 
Susie, and Godolphin on their short little legs, with groom and 
nurses in attendance. There were so niany wraps to be ad- 
justed, so many injunctions to be given to nurses and groom, 
so many little pockets to be filled with gingerbreads and queen- 
cakes, while Mrs. Grenville looked on and protested against 
grandmamma’s infraction of hygenic rules. Dr. Dudley 
Drooce hiwl said they must never eat between meals. 


146 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


Juanita rarely appeared before afternoon tea, when she was 
generally in her own particular easy-chair by the fire, fenced 
round by a seven-leaved Indian screen, which was big enough 
to include a couple of tables and a poufl, before the sisters-in- 
law came in from their afternoon drive or the shooters 
dropped in after their day in the woods. There were no other 
guests than the sisters and their husbands; and it was an 
understood thing that no one else should be asked, unless it 
were Lord and Lady Oheriton, the Dalbrooks from Dorches- 
ter, or Mr. Scarsdale. 

No one could have been sweeter than the young widow was 
to her visitors during the hours she spent with them, listening 
with inexhaustible patience to Ruth Gren videos graphic ac- 
count of the measles as lately “ taken ’’ by her whole brood, 
with all the after-consequences of the malady, and the amount 
of cod-liver oil and quinine consumed by each patient; pretend- 
ing to be interested in Jessica Morningside^s perpetual dis- 
quisitions upon smart people and smart people^ s frocks; and 
in every way performing her duty as a hostess; 

And yet George Grenville was not altogether satisfied. 

“ ITl tell you what it is, Ruth,^^ he said to his wife one 
night, in the luxurious privacy of the good old-fashioned bed- 
room, seated on the capacious sofa in front of the monumental 
four-poster, with elaborately turned columns, richly molded 
cornice, and heavy damask curtains; the kind of bedstead for 
which our ancestors gave fifty guineas, and for which no mod- 
ern auctioneer can obtain a bid of fifty shillings — “ 1^11 tell you 
what it is, Ruth,"” repeated Mr. Grenville, frowning at the 
fire, “ either your hrothei’s widow gives herself confounded 
airs, or there is something in the wind.^^ 

“ I^m afraid so, George, replied his wife, meekly. 

“YouTe afraid of what? Why the deuce canT you be 
coherent? Afraid of her airs — 

“ I^m afraid there is — something in the wind,^^ faltered the 
submissive lady. ‘‘ I suppose it^s the best thing that could 
happen to her, poor girl, for a nursery will be an occupation 
for her mind and prevent her brooding on her loss; but this 
place would have been very nice for Johnnie, all the same.^^ 

“ I should think it would, indeed, and he ought not to be 
swindled out of it,"" said Mr. Grenville, with a disgusted air. 
‘‘ I — I am surprised at your sister-in-law. 1 have always coii’ 
sidered that there is a kind of indelicacy in a posthumous 
child. It may be a prejudice on my part, but 1 have always 
felt a sort of revulsion when I have heard of such creatures,"" 
and Mr. Grenville curled his lordly aquiline nose and made a 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


147 


wry face at the jovial fire, blaziug hospitably, heaped high 
with coals and wood, and roaring up toward the frosty sky. 

CHAPTER XIIL 

“ Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life 
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife.” 

Harringtok Dalbrook was as keenly impressed with a 
sense of stupendous self-sacrifice in giving up his prospects in 
the Church as if the primacy had only been a question of time; 
yet as his divinity examination had twice ended in disappoint- 
ment and a shame-faced return to the paternal roof-tree, it 
might be thought that, in his friend Sir Heni^ Baldwin's 
j)hraseology, he was very well out of it. Sir Henry was the 
average young man of the epoch. Sharp, shallow, and with a 
monstrous opinion of his own superiority to the human race in 
general, and naturally to a friend whose father plodded over 
leases and agreements in an old-fashioned office in a country 
town; but the two young men happened to have been thrown 
together at Oxford, where Sir Henry was at Christ Church 
while Harrington Dalbrook was at New; and, as Sir Henry’s 
ancestral home was within six miles of Dorchester, the friend- 
ship begun at the university was continued in the country 
town. 

Sir Henry lived at a good old Georgian house called the 
Mount, between Dorchester and 'Weymouth. It was a red 
brick house, with a center and two wings and a Corinthian 
portico of Portland stone, and a wide, level lawn in front of 
the portico, that was always a blaze of scarlet geraniums. 
There were no novelties in the way of gardening at the Mount, 
and there were never likely to be any new departures while 
Lady Baldwin held the reins of power. She was known in the 
locality as a lady of remarkable ‘‘ closeness,” a lady who pared 
down every department of expenditure to the very bone. The 
gardens and shrubberies were always the acme of order, neat, 
trim, weedless; but everything was reduced to the minimum 
of outlay;/ there were no new plants or shrubs, no specimen 
trees, no innovations or improvements; there was very little 
‘‘ glass,” and there were only two gardeners to do the work in 
grounds for which most people would have kept four or five. 

The dowager was never ashamed to allude to the smallness 
of her jointure or to bemoan her son’s college debts. She had 
two daughters, the younger pale, sickly, and insignificant, the 
elder tall and large, with a beauty of the showy and highly 
colored order, brown eyes, a complexion of milk and roses. 


148 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


freely sprinkled with freckles, and light, wavy hair, which in 
a young woman of meaner station might have been called red. 

The neighborhood was of opinion that it was time for the 
elder Miss Baldwin to marry, and that she ought to marry 
well; but that important factor [in marriage, the bridegroom, 
was not forthcoming. It was a ground of complaint against 
Sir Henry that he never brought any eligible young men to 
the Mount. 

“ My mother^s housekeeping would frighten them away if I 
did,^^ answered Henry, when hard driven upon this point. 
“ The young men of the present day like a good dinner. 
There isn’t a third-rate club in London where the half crown 
house dinner isn’t better than the food we have here — better 
cooked and more plentiful. ” 

“ Perhaps, if you helped mother a little things would be 
more comfortable than they are,” remonstrated Laura, the 
younger sister, who generally took upon herself the part of 
mentor. “ You must know that her inconae isn’t enough to 
keep up this place as it ought to be kept.” 

“ I don’t know anything of the kind. I believe she is 
hoarding and scraping for you two girls; but she’ll find by and 
by that she has been penny wise and pound foolish, for nobody 
worth having will ever propose to J uiiet in such a dismal hole 
as this,” continued the baronet, scornfully surveying the old- 
fashioned furniture, which had never been vivified by modern 
frivolities or made more luxurious by modern inventions. 

“ Juliet is not the beginning and end of our lives,” replied 
Laura, sourly. “-She has plenty of opportunities, if she were 
only capable of using them. I know her visiting costs a small 
fortune.” 

‘‘A very small one,” said Juliet. ‘‘1 have fewer gowns 
than any girl I meet, and have to give smaller tips when 1 am 
leaving. The servants are hardly civil to me when 1 go back 
to a house.” 

“ I dare say not,” retorted Laura, “ considering that you 
expect other people’s maids to do more for you than your own 
maid would do, if you had one. ” , 

Juliet sighed, and shrugged her graceful shoulders. 

“It is all very horrid and very sordid,” she said, “ and I 
wish I were dead. ” 

“ I don’t go so far as that,” replied Laura, “but I wish 
with all my heart you were married, and then mother and 1 
could live in peace. ” 

All this meant that the handsome Miss Baldwin was six-and- 
twenty, and that, although she had drunk the cup of praise 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


149 


from men and women, not one eligible man, with place and 
fortune to offer, had offered -himself. EligibliB men had ad- 
mired and had praised and had flattered, and had ridden away, 
like the knight of old, and had married some other girl; a girl 
with money generally, an American girl sometimes. Juliet 
Baldwin hated the very name of Columbus. 

For want of some one better to flirt with, Juliet had flirted 
with Harrington Halbrook. He was her junior by two years, 
and on his first visit to the Mount had succumbed to her 
beauty and to the charm of manners which somewhat exagger- 
ated the progressive spirit of the smart world. Miss Baldwin 
was amused by her conquest, though she had no idea of allow- 
ing her acquaintance with her brother's friend to travel be- 
yond the strictest limits of that state of things which our 
neighbors call “ flirtage.'’^ But “ flirtage nowadays is some- 
what comprehensive, and with J uliet went so far as to allow 
her admirer to gratify her with offerings of gloves and flowers 
for her ball-dresses, when she was staying with her friends in 
Belgravia and the young man was taking a holiday in Loudon, 

It may be that the fascinations of this young lady had some- 
thing to do with Harrington^s failure to pass his divinity 
examination, and with his subsequent disgust at the Church 
. of England, and his determination to throw himself into the 
wider faith of the naturalist and the metaphysician. He told 
his family that he had got beyond Christianity as it was under- 
stood by Churchmen and set forth in the Thirty-nine Articles. 
He had gone from the river to the sea, as he explained it, from 
the narrow, banked-in river of orthodoxy to the wide ocean of 
the new faith — faith in humanity — faith in a universal brother- 
hood — faith in one’s self as superior to anything else in the 
universe, past or present. In this enlightened attitude he had 
grasped at Theodore’s offer, all the more eagerly, perhaps, be- 
cause he had lately heard Juliet Baldwin’s emphatic declara- 
tion — apropos to nothing particular — that she would never 
marry a parson; that the existence of a parson’s wife in town 
or country seemed to her of all lives the most odious. 

Would she take more kindly to a lawyer? he asked himself, 
with a sinking heart. Would a country practice, life in an 
old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned market-town satisfy 
her ambition? He feared not. If he were to have that radiant 
creature for his wife, he must exchange country for town, 
Dorchester for Lincoln’s Inn Fields and a house in Cliiftster 
Street, or at least Gloucester Place. She had been used to Bel- 
gravia, but she might, perhaps, tolerate the neighborhood of 
Portman Square, the unaristocratic sound of Baker Street, 


150 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


the convenience of Atlas omnibuses, until the day in which he 
might be able start his brougham. 

Led on by this guiding star, he told himself that what he 
had to do was to become learned in the law, particularly in the 
science, art, and mystery of conveyancing, which branch of a 
family practice he believed to be at once dignified and the 
most lucrative. He had to make himself master of his profes- 
sion, to make his experiments upon the inferior clay of Dor- 
setshire — upon farmers and small gentry — and then to per- 
suade his father to buy him a London practice, an aristocratic 
London practice, such as should not call a blush to the cheek 
of a fashionable wife. He had met solicitors" wives who gave 
themselves all the airs of great ladies, and who talked as if the 
Bench and the Bar were set in motion and kept going by their 
husbands. Such a wife would be J uliet, could he be so blessed 
as to win her. 

The mild “ flirtage,"" involving much tribute from the 
glover and the florist, the bookseller and the photographer, 
had been going on for nearly three years, and Harrington was 
tremendously in earnest. His sisters had encouraged him in 
his infatuation, thinking that it would be rather a nice thing 
to have a baronet as a family connection, and with a sneaking 
admiration for Sir Henry Baldwin’s club-house manners and 
slangy vocabulary, which had to be translated to them in the 
first instance by Harrington. They liked to be intimate with 
Miss Baldwin of the Mount, liked to see her smart little pony- 
cart waiting for an, hour in front of the door in Cornhill, 
while the young lady prattled about her conquests, her frocks, 
and her parties over the afternoon tea-table. True that she 
never talked about anybody but herself, except when she slan- 
dered a rival belle; but the background of her talk was the 
smart world, and that was a world of which Janet and her sis- 
ter loved to hear, albeit “ plain living and high thinking ” was 
the badge of their lives. 

Sir Henry had a small hunting stud, and somewhat ungra- 
ciously allowed his elder sister an occasional mount, although, 
as he took care to impress upon her, he hated hunting women. 
For the pleasure of being in the young lady’s society Harring- 
ton, who had no passion for horsemanship, became all of a 
sudden an ardent sportsman, borrowed his brother’s cob, Peter, 
and bought an elderly hunter which was not quite quick enough 
for his friend Sir Henry. 

“ You don’t mean hunting in the shires, so pace is not of 
so much consequence to you as it is to me,” said the baronet: 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


151 

Mahmud will carry you beautifully in our country, and he’s 
as quiet as a sheep.” 

It ^is possible that this qualification of sheepishness was Mah- 
mud’s chief merit in Harrington’s estimation. He was a black 
horse, and lookbd a good deal for the money. Sir Henry asked 
a hundred guineas for him and finally took a bill for "eighty, 
and this transaction was the first burden of debt which Har- 
rington Dalbrook laid upon his shoulders after leaving the 
university. There had been college debts, and he had consid- 
erably exceeded a very liberal allowance, but his father had 
paid those debts to the last shilling; and one grave and stern 
remonstrance, with a few fatherly words of advice for the fut- 
ure had been all that Harrington had been called upon to 
endure. But he did not forget that his father had warned 
him against the consequences of any future folly. 

He felt rather uncomfortable when the black horse was 
brought to the door one hunting morning, and when his father 
happened to be in the front office, whence he could see the 
spectacle of an unknown animal. 

‘‘ Where did you get that black horse, Harrington? Is it a 
hire?” he asked. 

“ No. The fact is/ I’ve bought him.” 

“ Have you really? You must be richer than I gave you 
credit for being if you can afford to buy yourself a hunter. 
He looks a well-bred one, but shows work. I hope you didn’t 
give much for him.” 

No; I got him on easy terms.” 

“ Not on credit, I hope?” 

“ No; of course not. Sir Henry Baldwin sold him to me. 
I had saved a little out of my allowance, don’t you know?” 

“ I’m very glad to hear it. And now be off and get a good 
day’s sport, if you can. I shall want you to stick to your desk 
to-morrow.” 

Harrington took up his crop and hurried out, with a heart 
as heavy as lead, Never until to-day had he told his father a 
deliberate falsehood; but Matthew Dalbrook’s searching look 
had frightened him out of his veracity. Only six months ago 
he had solemnly pledged himself to avoid debt, and here he 
was owing eighty guineas for a beast whom he could hardly 
hope to ride to hounds half a dozen times that season. Ho 
had involved himself for the beast’s maintenance also, for his 
father’s stables were full, and he had been obliged to put this 
new animal out at livery. He began to feel now tliat ho had 
made a fool of himself; that he had been talked into buying a 
horse for which he had very little use. 


152 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


He was jogging along in a low-spirited way when Sir Henry 
and his sister came up behind him at a sharp trot, whereat 
Mahmud gave a buck jump that almost unseated him. 

“The black looks a trifle fresh this morning,"" said Sir 
Henry. “ You"ll take it out of him presently.* He suits you 
capitally, well up to your weight. 1 was a little bit too heavy 
for him. You"ll find him go like old boots."" 

Miss Baldwin, flushed with fresh air and exercise, looked 
more than usually brilliant. She was particularly amiable 
too; and when Harrington complained that he might not be 
able to give Mahmud enough work, she offered to meet the 
difficulty. 

“ Send him over to me whenever you don"t want him,"" she 
said, cheerily. “ I"ll make him handy for you."’ 

The black gave another buck jump, and Harrington felt 
inclined to lay him at her feet there and then. It was only 
the remembrance of that horrid slip of stamped paper ’which 
had doubtless already been transferred to the captain’s bank- 
ing account, which restrained him. He made up his mind to 
send Mahmud to TattersalTs at the end of the hunting season 
to be sold without reserve. Juliet was riding a thorough-bred 
of which she was particularly^ fond, and was in very high 
spirits during the earlier part of the day; and in her lively 
society Harrington forgot the stamped paper and gradually 
got on good terms with his horse. Mahmud had, indeed^ no 
fault but age; knew a great deal better how to keep near the 
hounds than his new master, and really promised to be a valu- 
able acquisition. 

Harrington felt that he was distinguishing himself. 

“The black suits you down to the ground,"" shouted Sir 
Henry, in the middle of a run, as he bucketed past his friend 
upon a pulling chestnut that had no respect for anybody, 
but just clove his way through the ruck of riders like a bat- 
tering-ram. 

Sir Henry boasted of this animal that he never kicked a 
hound. 

“ Small thanks to him,"." said the master, “ for he kicks 
everything else. Hounds are not good enough for him. He 
nearly smashed my leg last Monday."" 

Harrington and Juliet did a good deal of quiet flirtation 
while the hounds were drawing a spinny rather late in the 
day after a very good run and a kill. He told her all above 
the change in his position, and that he was to be his father’s 
partner after a. very short apprenticeship to the law. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 153 

“ And you will live in Dorchester all your lifc/^ said Juliet, 
with an involuntary sornfulness. 

“ Not if I can help it. I don^t mean to vegetate in a dead- 
alive provincial town. My father has a London connection 
already, and all his business wants is a little new blood. I 
hope to start chambers in Lincoln-’s Inn Fields before I am 
thirty. And if I should marry,^^ he continued, faltering a lit- 
tle, “ I could alford to have a house in the West End — May- 
fair or Belgravia, for instance.^'’ 

“ Let it be Mayfair, I beg — for your wife’s sake, whoever 
she may be,” exclaimed Juliet, lightly. “ A small house- in 
Belgravia is an abomination. There is an atmosphere of in- 
vincible dreariness throughout that district which can only be 
redeemed by wealth and splendor. Perhaps it is because the 
place is on a level with Millbank. There is a flavor of the 
prison in the very air. Now in Ourzon or HBrtford Street one 
breathes the air of the park and Piccadilly, and one could 
exist in a band-bpx. But really now, Harrington, joking apart, 
is it not rather wild in a young man like you — not out of 
paternal leadihg-strings — to talk about marriage and house- 
keeping?” 

“One can’t help thinking of the future. Besides, I am not 
so very young. I am f our-and-twenty. ’ ’ 

Juliet laughed a short, cynical laugh, which ended in a sigh. 
She wondered whether he knew that she was three years older. 
Brothers are such traitors. 

“ 1 am f our-and-twenty, and I feel that it is in me to suc- 
ceed,” concluded Harrington, with a comfortable vanity which 
he mistook for the arrogance of genius. 

The hounds drew blank, and they jogged homeward pres- 
ently, by lane and common. Sir Henry riding in front with one 
of his particular friends and talking horseflesh all the way, 
and Juliet and Harrington following slowly, side by side, in 
earnest conversation. - 

He told her the history of his doubts, about which she did 
not "Care twopence — his “phases of faith and feeling,” as he 
expressed it alliteratively. All she wanted to'know was about 
his prospects — whether his father was as well off as he was said 
to be — she had heard people talk of him as a very rich man — 
those officious people who are always calculating other people’s 
incomes and descanting upon the little their neighbors spend 
and the much that they must contrive to save. Juliet had 
heard a good deal of this kind of talk about Matthew Dalbrook, 
whose unpretentious and somewhat old-fashioned style of liv- 
ing gave an impression of reserved force — wealth invested and 


154 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


accumulating for a smarter generation. After all^ perhaps, 
this young man, whose adoration was obvious, might not be 
such a despicable parti. He might be fairly well off by and 
by, with a fourth, or better than a fourth, share of Matthew 
Dalbrook^s scrapings — and he was Lord Cheriton^s cousin, and 
therefore could hardly be called a nobody. 

Moved by these considerations, gravely weighed in the grave 
and gray November dusk, as they rode slowly between tall 
hedges, leafy still, but sear and red with the frost, Juliet felt 
inclined to let herself be engaged to her legal lover. She had 
been engaged to several people since she danced at her first 
ball. The bond did not count for very much, in her mind. 
One could always slip out of that kind of thing if it became 
inconvenient; one could manage with such tact that the man 
himself cried off if one were afraid of being denounced as a 
jilt. Juliet and her lovers had always parted friends; and she 
wore more than , one half hoop of sapphires or of brilliants 
which had once played a solemn part, but which had lapsed 
into a souvenir of friendship. 

She was not so foolish as to hasten matters. She wanted to 
see her way before her; and she opposed Harrington^s youth- 
ful ardor with the calm savoir faire of seven-and- twenty. She 
called him a foolish boy. and declared that they must cease to 
be friends if he insisted upon talking nonsense. She would 
have to accept a very urgent invitation to Lady Balgowny 
Brigg’s castle in Scotland, which she had been fencing with 
for years, if he made it difficult for them to meet. She threw 
him into a state of abject alarm by this stupendous threat. 

“ 1 wonT say a word you can take objection to,^^ he protest- 
ed, “ though I canT think why you should object. 

“ You forget that I have to study other people^s ideas as 
well as my own,^^ she answered, gently, ‘‘ I hope you won^t 
be offended if I tell you that my mother would never speak to 
me again if I were engaged to you.'’^ 

“No doubt Lady Baldwin has higher views, the young 
man said, meekly. 

“ Much higher views. My poor mother belongs to the old 
school. She can not forget that her grandfather was a mar- 
quis. It is foolish, but I suppose it is human nature. DonT 
let us talk any more about this nonsense. 1 like you very 
much as my brother's friend, and I shall go on liking you if 
you don't make me unhappy by talking nonsense." 

Harrington took comfort from that one word “ unhappy. " 
It implied depths of feeling beneath that fashionable manner 
which held him at arm's-length. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


155 


His spirits were somewhat dashed presently when Miss Bald- 
win looked with friendly contemptuousness at his neat heather- 
mixture coat, and mud-stained white cords, and said, care- 
lessly : 

“ Ik’s a pity you don^t belong to the hunt. I fancy you 
would look rather nice in pink!^^ 

“ I — I— have so lately given up the idea of the Church,^' 
he faltered. 

“ Yes, but now you have given it up, you ought to be a 
member of the hunt. Let my brother put you up at the next 
meeting. You are pretty sure of being elected, and then you 
can order your pink swallow-tail coat in time for the hunt ball 
in December. 

Harrington shivered. That would mean two red coats — a 
hunting-coat and a dancing-coat. But this idea of twenty 
pounds laid out upon coats was not the worst. Twenty years 
ago, when he had ridden as hard and kept as good horses as 
any member of the hunt, Matthew Dalbrook had resolutely 
declined the honor of membership. He had considered that 
a provincial solicitor had other work than to ride to hounds 
twice or three times a week. He might allow himself that 
pleasure now and again as an occasional relaxation in a hard- 
working professional life; but it was not for him to spend long 
days tearing about the country with the men of whose lands 
and interests he was in some wise custodian. 

Theodore, who was at heart much more of a sportsman than 
his younger brother, had respected his father^s old-fashioned 
prejudices, whatever line they took, and he had never allowed 
his name to be put up for the hunt. He had subscribed liber- 
ally to the fund for contingent expenses, as his father and 
grandfather had done before him; but he had been content to 
forego the glory of a scarlet coat and the privilege of the hunt 
buttons. 

Harrington was not strong in that chief virtue of man, 
moral courage — the modern and loftier equivalent for that 
brute-courage which was the Romanes only idea of virtue. 
He felt that to acknowledge himself afraid to put up for elec- 
tion into the sacred circjle of the hunt lest he should offend his 
father, was to own by implication that a solicitor was not quite 
upon the social level of landed gentry and retired military 
men, the colonels and majors who form the chief ornament of 
the average hunt club. 

He murmured something to the effect that his father was 
not sporting, and wouldnT like him to waste too much time 
riding to hounds. 


166 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


‘‘What does that matter?^^ exclaimed Juliet. “You 
needn^t go out any oftener because you are a member of the 
hunt. There are men- who appear scarcely half a dozen times 
in a season — men who have left the neighborhood, and only 
come down for a run now and then for old sake’s sake.” 

“ ITl think it over,” faltered Harrington. “Don’t say 
anything to Sir Henry about it just yet.” * 

“ As you please; but I sha’n’t dance with you at the ball if 
you wear a black coat,” said Juliet, giving her bridle a sharp 
little shake and trotting forward to join her brother. 

Mahmud, discomposed by that sudden start, gave a sham- 
bling, elderly shy; Harrington pulled him up into a walk, and 
rode sulkily on, and allowed the other three riders to melt 
from him in the shades of evening. 

Yes, she was beautiful exceedingly, and it would be promo- 
tion for a country solicitor to be engaged to a girl of such high 
standing; but he felt that his relations with her were hedged 
round with difficulty. She was expensive herself, and a cause 
of expense in others. She had spent the brightest years of her 
girlhood in visiting in country-houses where everything was on 
a grander scale than at the Mount. She had escaped from 
the barrenness of home to the mansions of noblemen and 
millionaires. She had strained all her energies toward one 
aim — to be popular and to be asked to good houses. She had 
run the gantlet of the best smoke-rooms in the three king- 
doms, and had been talked about everywhere as the handsome 
Miss Baldwin. Yet her twenty-seventh birthday had sounded, 
and she was Miss Baldwin still. Half a dozen times she had 
fancied herself upon the eve of a great success — such a mar- 
riage as would at once exalt her to the pinnacle of social dis- 
tinction — and at the last moment, as it seemed, the man had 
changed his mind. Some malicious harpy mother of ugly 
daughters, or disappointed spinster, had told the eligible 
suitor “ things ” about Miss Balwdin — harmless little devia- 
tions from the rigid lines of maidenly etiquette — and the suitor 
had cried olf, fearing in his own succinct speech that he was 
going to be “ had.” 

At seven-and-twenty, damaged by the reputation of failure — 
spoken of by the initiated as “ that handsome girl Maltravers 
so nearly married, don’t you know?” — Miss Baldwin felt that 
all hope of a great match was over. The funeral bell of am- 
bition had tolled. She began to grow reckless; eat her dinner 
and took her dry champagne with a masculine gusto; smoked 
as.many cigarettes as a secretary of legation; read all the new 
French novels and talked about theni with her partners; was 


THE HAY WIT.L COME. 


157 


keen upon racing, and loved euchre and iiap. She had half 
made up her mind to throw herself away upon the first wealthy 
cottoT^-spinner she might meet up in the north, when she 
allowed herself to be touched by Harrington Dalbrook^s some- 
what boyish devotion, and began to wonder whether it might 
not be well for her to end her checkered career by a love 
match. 

He was good-looking, much better educated than her broth- 
er and her brother’s set, and he adored her. But, on the other 
hand, he was utterly without any claims to be considered 
“ smart,” and marriage with him would mean at best bread 
and cheese — or would, at least, mean nothing better than bread 
and cheese until they should both be middle-aged, and she 
should have lost all semblance of a waist. She had met solic- 
itors’ wives in society who wore diamonds, and who hurried 
away from evening parties because they were afraid of their 
horses catching cold — a carefulness which to her mind implied 
that horses were a novelty. She had even heard of solicitors 
making big fortunes; but she concluded that those were ex- 
ceptional men, and she did not see in her lover’s character the 
potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. 

Moved by these mixed feelings, she allowed her lover to 
dangle in a state of uncertainty, and to spend all his spare 
cash upon those airy nothings which a young lady of Miss 
Baldwin’s easy tempos' will accept from even a casual admirer. 
He knew the glover whose gloves she approved, and she occa- 
sionally told him the color of a gown in advance, so that he 
mieht give her a suitable fan; and she had, furthermore, an 
off-hand way of mentioning any songs or new French novels 
she fancied. 

“ How very sweet of you!” she would say, when the songs 
or the books appeared; “ but it is really too bad — 1 must never 
mention anything I want in your hearing.” 

In spite of which wise remark the volatile, damsel went on 
mentioning things, and being surprised when her wishes were 
gratified. 

Miss Baldwin had met Lady Cheriton and her daughter both 
in town and country, and she and her people had been invited 
to garden-parties at Cheriton Chase, but there had been no 
intimacy between the families. Lady Cheriton shrank with 
an inward terror from a young lady of such advanced opinions 
as those which dropped like pearls and diamonds — or like toads 
and adders — according to the idea of her hearers — from Miss 
Baldwin’s lips, liiimors of the young man’s infatuation had 


158 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


been conveyed to the Priory by Juanita^'s mother-in-law, and 
Harrington, having gone to the family dinner at Milbrook, 
was severely interrogated by his cousin. 

“ I hope there is no truth in what I have heard about you, 
Harry, she said, confidentially, when he was sitting by her 
in her favorite corner within the shadow of a tall Japanese 
screen. 

‘‘ 1 can not answer that question until you tell me what you 
have heard, he replied, with offended dignity. 

‘‘ Something that would make me very unhappy if it were 
true. I was told that you were getting entangled with that 
Miss Baldwin. 

“ I don’t know why you should lay such an offensive em- 
phasis upon the demonstrative pronoun. Miss Baldwin is 
beautiful and accomplished — and — 1 am very proud of being 
attached to her.” 

“ Has it gone so far as that, Harry? Are you actually en- 
gaged to her?” 

“ I am not actually engaged — she has a right to look a good 
deal higher — but I hope to make her my wife as soon as I am 
in a position to marry. She has given me so much encourage- 
ment that I don’t think she will refuse me when the right time 
comes.” 

" ‘^But, my dear boy, she is always giving encouragement,” 
exclaimed Juanita, anxiously. 

Dear little Lucy Grenville was at the piano at the other end 
of the room, playing an infantile arrangement of Batti, 
batti,” with fingers of iron, while mother and grandmother 
hung over her enraptured, and while the rest of the family 
party talked their loudest, so the cousins in the nook by the 
fire were not afraid of being overheard. ‘‘ She is the most en- 
couraging young lady I ever heard, of. She has jilted and 
been jilted a dozen times, I believe — ” 

“ You lelievef” echoed Harrington, with intense indigna- 
tion; I wonder that a girl of your good sense — in most 
things — can give heed to such idle gossip. ” 

“ Do you mean to say that she has not been jilted?” * 

“ Certainly not. I know that her name has been associ- 
ated with the names of men in society. Silly people who write 
for the paj)ers have given out things about her. She was to 
marry Lord Welbeck, Sir Humphrey Random-Heaven knows 
whom. A girl can’t stay at big houses, and be admired as she 
has been, without all manner of reports getting about. Ihit 
she is heartily sick of that kind of life, an endless web of un- 
meaning gayeties— that is what she herself called it. She will 


THE DAY WILL COME, 


159 


be very glad to settle down to a refined, quiet life — say at the 
West End of London, with a victoria and brougham, and a 
small house, prettily furnished. One can furnish so prettily 
and so cheaply nowadays,^’ concluded Harrington, with his 
mind^s eye upon certain illustrated advertisements he had seen 
of late — Jacobean dining-rooms — Sheraton drawing-rooms — 
for a mere song. 

‘ ‘ 1 have heard people -say that a reformed rake makes a 
good husband, said Juanita, gravely, “but 1 have never 
heard that a reformed flirt makes a good wife.'’-’ 

“ It is a shame to talk like that, Juanita. Every handsome 
girl is more or less a flirt. She can^t help flirting. Men in- 
sist upon flirting with her. 

“ Does your father know you mean to marry Miss Bald- 
win?’^ 

“ No, I have never mentioned marriage to him. That will 
come in good time. 

“ And do you think he will approve?’^ 

. “ I donT know. He is full of old-fashioned prejudices; but 

I doii’t see how he can object to my marrying into one of the 
county families. 

“ DonT you think it will be more like Miss Baldwin marry- 
ing out of one of the county families? I^m afraid from what 
I know of her brother and of old Lady Baldwin they would 
both want her to mayry money. 

“ I suppose they have wanted that for the last four or five 
years,^^ answered Harrington; “ but it has not come off, and 
they must be satisfied if she chooses to marry for love.'’^ 

“ Well, 1 mustn’t plague you any more, Harry. I see your 
heart is too deeply involved. 1 hope Miss Baldwin is a nicer 
girl than I have ever thought her. Girls are sometimes preju- 
diced against each other. ” 

“ Occasionally,” said Harrington, with satirical emphasis. 

Lucy finished “ Batti, batti,” with a final chord in the bass 
and a final twirl in the treble, and was pronounced by her 
grandmother to have achieved wonders. 

“ Her time is a little uncertain,” her mother remarked 
modestly, “ but she has a magnificent ear. You should see 
her run to the window when there is an organ in the street. ” 

“Yes, mother,” cried Johnny, “but she never stays to 
listen unless there is a monkey on the top. ” 

December came, and the hunt ball, at which more than one 
of Miss Baldwin’s discarded or discarding admirers were pres- 
ent. The young lady looked very handsome in white satin 


ICO 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


tind gauze, without a vestige of color about her costume, and 
with her bodice cut with an audacity which is the peculiar 
privilege of dress-makers who live south of Oxford Street. The 
white gown set off Miss Baldwin's brilliant coloring and looked 
well against the pink coats of her partners. 

Harrington's dress suit had been a thing of beauty and a 
joy to him when it came home from his London tailor's, folded 
as no human hands could ever -fold it again, enshrined in 
layers of tissue-paper. His sisters had helped to unpack it, 
and had exclaimed at the extravagance of the corded silk lapels 
and the satin sleeve lining, and he had himself deemed that 
the archetypal coat could scarcely be more beautiful. Yet in 
this lurid ball-room he felt ashamed of his modest black twilled 
kersimere and the insignificance of his white tie. The fox- 
hunters seemed to him to have it all their own way. 

Miss Baldwin, however, was not unkind. She danced with 
him oftener than with any one else, especially after supper, 
when she became unconscientious and forgetful as to her en- 
gagements, and when her card was found to hold twice as 
many names as there were dances, and one caricature of a 
lobster waltzing with a champagne bottle, supplied by an un- 
known hand. 

It was a cold, clear night, and youth and imprudence were 
going in couples to the garden behind the ball-room for cool- 
ness between the dances, and to look at the frosty stars, which 
in the enthusiasm of girlhood were accepted as a novelty. 
Harrington and Juliet were among those who ventured into 
the garden, the lady wrapped in a great white fur cloak, which 
made her look like a hay-stack in a snow-piece. 

“Poor DorisQourt brought me this polar-bear skin, ^ she 
said. “ He shot the bear himself, at the risk of his life. I 
had asked him to bring me a skin when he came home." 

_ “ You asked him to give you something for which he must 
risk his life, and yet you make a great fuss at acceiiting Dau- 
det's last novel from me," said Harrington, with tender re- 
proachfulness. 

“ Ah, but you and Doriscourt are so different," exclaimed 
Juliet, rather contemptuously. “ He was a great dare-devil, 
who would have come down hand over hand on a rope from 
the moon if there had been any way of getting up there." 

“ What has become of him?" 

“ Head! He died a year ago — of drink. I'm afraid — lung- 
complaint complicated with del. trem. Poor fellow!" 

She breathed a deep sigh, with that little pensive air which, 
in a young lady of experience, is as much as to say, “ He was 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


161 


the only man I ever loved/ ^ and then she turned the conver- 
sation and talked of the supper and the champagne, which she 
sweepingly condemf^ed. 

Harrington hated that talk about the supper. He would 
have preferred talking of the stars like a school-girl, or, like 
Claude Melnotte, “ wondering what star should be our home 
when love becomes immortal. To be told that the wine 
which now glowed in his veins and intensified his passion was 
not worth three and sixpence a bottle jarred upon his finer 
feelings. “ You are such a cynic, he said. “ 1 think I 
shall never get any nearer to your real self — for I know there 
is a heart under that mocking vein. 

And then he repeated his simple story of a humble, devoted 
love — humble, because the woman he loved was the loveliest 
among all womankind, and because she occupied a higher 
plane than that on which his youth had been spent. 

“ But you have taught me what ambition means,” he said. 

Only promise to be my wife, and you shall see that I am in 
earnest — that it is in me to succeed.^’ 

She had long been wavering — touched by his truthfulness, 
his boyish sentiment — very weary of life at the Mount, where 
the mother scolded and the sister sneered, and where the un- 
derfed and underpaid servants were frankly disobliging, where 
her brother rarely saw his womankind except at meals, which 
periods of family life he enlivened by a good deal of strong 
language, grumbling at the cookery and at the deterioration of 
landed property in general and his own in particular. The 
rest of his home-life he spent in the billiard-room or the 
stables, where be found the society of the saddle-room more 
congenial than the dreariness of the drawing-room, where his 
mother and sister were not always on speaking terms. 

From such a house as the Mount — goodly and fair to look 
upon without, as many other whited sepulchers — any escape 
would be welcome. Juliet felt that she was a great deal too 
good for a young mari of uncertain prospects and humdrum 
surroundings; but he was very much in love, and he was 
good-looking, and, in her own particular phraseology, she was 
beginning to be rather weak about him. She was so weak 
that she let him hold her unresisting hand, as they stood side 
by side in the garden, and devour it with kisses. 

“ You certainly ought to do well in the world,” she said, 
sweetly ; “ for you are the most persistent person 1 ever knew. " ' 

He looked round, saw that they were alone in the garden, 
and clasped her in his arms, polar bear and all, and kissed the 
unresisting lips as he had kissed the unresisting hand. 


m 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ My dearest/^ he exclaimed, that means for life, does it 
not?’^ . 

“ You are taking everything for granted,’^ she said; but 
I suppose it must be so. Only remember I don’t want our 
engagement talked about, till you are in a more assured posi- 
tion. My mother would make home a hell upon earth if she 
knew.” 

“ I will do nothing rash, nothing that you do not approve,” 
replied Harrington, considerably relieved by this injunction; 
for, although it was not Matthew Halbrook’s habit to make a 
pandemonium of the family circle, Harrington feared that he 
would strongly disapprove of such an alliance as that which 
his younger son had chosen for himself. He welcomed the 
idea of delay, hoping to be more firmly seated at the office 
desk before he must needs make the unpleasing avowal. 
“ When my father finds I am valuable to him, he will be more 
inclined to indulgence,” he thought. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

“ For men have marble, women waxen, minds. 

And therefore are they formed as marble will; 

The weak oppressed, the impression of strange kinds, 

Is formed in them by force, /by fraud, or skill; 

Then call them not the authors of their ill.” 

Inclination' would have taken Theodore Dalbrook to Dor- 
setshire before the Christmas holidays gave him an excuse for 
going home; but he wrestled with that haunting desire to re- 
visit the Priory, and to be again tete-a-tete with his cousin in 
the dimly lighted room where she had talked to him of her 
own sorrows and of his ambitions. The memory of that last 
evening was the most vivid element in his life. It stood out 
like a spot of light against the dull gray of monotonous days 
and the burden of dry-as-dust reading. But he had told her 
that he should not see her until Christmas-time, and he was 
not weak enough to indulge that insane longing for the society 
of a woman whose heart was in the grave of her husband. 

November and the greater part of December stretched be- 
fore him, like a long, dark road which had to be trodden some- 
how before he came to the inn at which there would be light 
and comfort, cheerful voices, and friendly greetings. He set 
his face resolutely toward that dark prospect, and tramped 
along, doing the work he had to do, living the life of a hermit 
in those chambers in Ferret Court, which had already taken 
the stamp of his own character and looked as if he had lived 
in them for years. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


163 


' He had no need to sit alone at night with his books and his 
lamp, for there were plenty of houses in which he would have 
been welcome. His name was a passport in legal circles. Old 
friends of James Dalbrook were ready to welcome his kins- 
man to their tables, eager to be of service to him. He had his 
college friends, too, in the great city, and need not have gone 
companionless. But he was not in the mood for society of 
any kind, old or young, except the society of Blackstone, 
Coke, and Justinian, and divers other sages who, out of the 
dim past, shed their light upon the legal wilderness of the 
present. He sat by his fire and read law, and laid down his 
book only to smoke his meditative pipe and indulge in foolish 
waking dreams about that grave old house in Dorsetshire and 
the young widow who lived there. 

He had followed two of those three children of the old 
squire, two out of the three faces in the picture in the hall at 
Cheriton, to the end of their story. No man could discover 
any postscript to that story, which in each case was closed by 
a grave. 

There remained only one last unfinished record, the, history 
of the runaway wife, the end whereof was open to doubt. 
That unlucky lady^s fate had been accepted upon hearsay. It 
had been said that she had died at Boulogne, within a year or 
so after the vicar met her there. 

Upon his return from Jersey Theodore had written to his 
father^s oldest and most experienced clerk, b^ging him to 
hunt up the evidence of Mrs. Darcy^s death, so far as it was 
obtainable at Cheriton or in the neighborhood. 

The clerk replied as follows, after an interval of ten days: 

“Dear Sir, — I have been twice at Cheriton, and have 
made inquiries, cautiously, as you wished, with respect to the 
report of Mrs. Darcy’s death, some fifteen years ago, and saw 
the doctor, Mr. Dolby, and Caster, at the general shop, who, 
as you are no doubt aware, is a gentleman who busies himself 
a good deal about other people’s affairs, and sets himself up 
for being an authority upon most things. 

“ Mr. Dolby I found very vague in his ideas. He remem- 
bered the late vicar telling him about having met Mrs. Darcy 
in the market-place at Boulogne, and being shocked at the 
change in her. He told Mr. Dolby that he did not think she 
was long for this world; but it was some time after when Dol- 
by heard some one — he could not remember who it was — as- 
sert that Mrs. Darcy was dead. 

“ Caster had much more to say upon the subject. He pre- 


X64 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


tends to be interested in all reminiscences of the Strangwa;^s, 
and boasts of having served Cheriton House for fifty-five years. 
He remembers Evelyn Strangvv^ay when she was a little girl, 
handsome and high-spirited. He remembered the report of 
her death at Boulogne getting about the village, and he re- 
membered mentioning the fact to Lord Cheriton at the time. 
There was an election going on just then, and his lordship 
had looked in to consult him, Joseph Caster, about certain 
business details; and his lordship seemed shocked to hear of 
the poor lady^s death. ‘ I suppose that is the end of the 
family, my lord?’ Caster said; and his lordship replied, ‘ Yes, 
that is the end of the Strang ways.’ 

Caster believes that he must have read of the death in the 
newspapers; perhaps copied from the ‘ Times ’ into a^ local 
paper; at any rate the fact had implanted itself in his mind, 
and it had never occurred to him to doubt it. 

“ I asked him if he knew what had become of the lady’s 
husband, but here his mind is a blank. He had heard that 
the man was a scamp, and that was all he knew about him. 

“ Since making these inquiries I have spent a long evening 
at the Literary Institute, where, as you know, there is a set of 
the ‘ Times,’ in volumes, extending over a period of forty 
years. I have looked through the deaths for three years, tak- 
ing the year in which Caster thinlcs he heard of Mrs. Darcy’s 
death, as the middle year out of three, but without result. It 
is, of course, unlikely that the death would be advertised if 
the poor lady died friendless and in poverty in a foreign town; 
but I thought it my duty to make this investigation. 

“ Awaiting your further commands, etc., et^c.” 

There was nothing conclusive in this; and Theodore felt 
that the history of Mrs. Darcy’s later years remained to be 
unraveled. It was not to be supposed that the runaway wife, 
who, if she were yet living, must be an elderly woman, could 
have had act or part in the murder of Sir Codfrey Carmichael; 
but it was not the less a part of his task to trace her story to 
its final chapter. Then only could he convince Juanita of the 
wildness of that idea which connected the catastrophe of the 
29 th of July with the exiled Strang ways. When he could say 
to her, ‘ You see that long before that fatal night the squire’s 
three children had vanished from this earth,” she would be 
constrained to confess that the solution of the mystery was not 
to be sought here. 

He went over to Boulogne^ saw the English chaplain and 
several of the hotel-keepers. He explored the cemetery, and 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


165 


examined the record of the dead. He visited the police, and 
he made friends with the elderly editor of an old-established 
newspaper; but from all his questioning of various people the 
replt was blank. Nobody remembered a Mrs. Darcy, an En- 
glish woman of distinguished appearance but fallen fortunes, a 
woman long past youth and yet not old. If she had lived for 
any time in Boulogne she had left no traces of her existence 
which could be discovered; if she had died and been buried 
there she had left no record among the graves. 

Boulogne could tell him nothing. He came back to the 
great wilderness of London, the rallying-point for all wander- 
ers. It was there, perhaps, that the end of Evelyn Strangway 
was to be sought. 

He had, as it seemed to him, only one clew, the name of her 
governess. The governess was only seven or eight years older 
than the pupil, and she might have survived her pupil, and 
might have been in communication with her till the end. Jas- 
per Crane had told him that there was a strong attachment 
between Sarah Newton and the wayward girl she taught. 

To hunt for a governess among the thousands of portionless 
gentlewomen who try to live by teaching might seem more 
hopeless than the proverbial search for the lost needle, but 
Theodore did not despair. If Miss Newton had remained a 
spinster and had continued to exercise her vocation as a teacher 
she might be traced through one of those agencies which trans- 
act business between governess and employer ; but, on the other 
hand, if, as was more likely, she had long ago abandoned the 
profession of teacher and had made some obscure marriage, 
she would have sunk into the vast ocean of middle-class life, 
in whose depths it would be almost impossible to discover her. 
The firsk" thing to be done was to make a visitation of the 
agencies, and this task Theodore began two days after his re- 
turn from Boulogne. 

He had methodized his life by this time, devoting a certain 
portion of his days to his cousin’s interests, but in nowise 
neglecting the work he had to do for his own advancement. 
He had known too many instances of men who had made read- 
ing law an excuse for an idle and desultory life, and he was 
resolved that his own course should be steady and persistent 
even to doggedness. He had been told that success at the 
Bar was, nowadays, almost unattainable; that the men of the 
day who had conquered fame and were making great fortunes 
were in a manner miraculous men, and that it was futile for 
any young man to hope to follow in their steps. The road 
they had trodden was barred against the new-comer. Theo- 


166 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


dore listened to these pessimists, yet was not discouraged. He 
had told himself that he would emerge somehow from the ob- 
scurity of a country solicitor’s practice — would bring himself 
in some wise nearer the social level of the woman he loved, so 
that if, in the days to come, one gleam of hope should ever 
shine upon that long hopeless love, he might be able to say to 
her, “ My place in life is the place your father held when he 
offered himself to your mother; my determination to conquer 
fortune is not less than his.’’ 

He seldom passed the dingy door of the ground-floor cham- 
bers — on which the several names of three briefless ones wei'e 
painted in dirty letters that had once been white — without 
thinking of bis fortunate kinsman, without wondering what 
his life had been like in those darksome rooms, and in what 
shape fortune had first appeared to him. He had not married 
until he was forty. Long and lonely years had gone before 
that golden summer- tide of his life when a young and lovely 
woman had given him happiness and fortune. How had he 
lived in those lonely years? Tradition accused him of miserly 
habits, of shabby raiment, of patient grinding and scraping to 
accumulate wealth. Theodore knew that, if he had hoarded 
his earnings, it had been for a worthy end. He had set him- 
self to win a place among the lords of the soil. The land he 
loved had been to him as a mistress, and for that he had been 
content to live poorly and spend his nights in toil. For such 
miserliness Theodore had nothing but admiration; for he had 
seen how liberally'the man who had scraped and hoarded was 
^J)le to administer a large income — hOw generous as a master, 
friend, and patron the some-time miser had shown himself. 

He spent more than a week in visiting the numerous agen- 
cies which are employed by the great governess-class, and the 
result of that- painstaking exploration was not altogether bar- 
ren. He sueceeded in finding an elderly personage who was 
at the head of an old-established agency, who kept her books 
with praiseworthy regularity, and who remembered Sarah 
Newton. She had had no less than four Miss Newtons on her 
register at different times, but there was only one Sarah New- 
ton among them, and for this lady she had obtained a situa- 
tion in the Lake country so lately as July 20th, 3873— that is 
to say, about eleven years before the period of Theodore’s in- 
vestigation. 

On that date Miss Newton^ had entered the family of a 
clergyman — the vicar of a small parish between Ambleside 
and Bowness. She was living in that family four years after- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 167 

ward, when Miss Palmer, the principal in the a^ncy, last 
heard of l^r. 

“ And in all probability she is living there still,^^ said Miss 
Palmer. “ At her time of life people are not fond of change. 
I remember her when she was a young woman, full of energy, 
and very impatient of control. I used to see her much oftener 
then. She seldom kept a situation over a twelvemonth.^^ 

“ Except at Cheriton Chase. She was more than a year in 
that situation, I think. 

‘‘Cheriton Chase! 1 donH remember the name; someone 
else may have got her the situation. How long ago was she 
there, do you suppose?^’ asked Miss Palmer, turning over one 
of her neat, basil-bound registers. 

“ It was in the year ^47 she left Cheriton. 

“ Ah, then it was not us who got her the situation. My 
first entry .about her is on the 11th of December, M8, Sho 
paid her entrance fee of one guinea on that date. It is higher 
than that of inferior agencies;' but we take real trouble for our 
clients, and we make it our business to be safe upon the point 
of character. We are as careful about the families into which 
we send governesses as about the governesses^ we introduce into 
families. 

The next day was Sunday, and Theodore employed that day 
of rest in traveling by a very slow train to Bowness, where ho 
arrived at five o^clock in the evening, to find mountain and 
lake hidden in densest gray, and an innkeeper who seemed 
neither to desire nor deserve visitors. Happily the traveler 
was of the age at which dinner is not a vital question, and he 
hardly knew the toughness of the steak or the inferior quality 
of the codfish set before him in the dqsolate coffee-room. He 
had a diamond Virgil in his pocket, and he sat by th^ fire 
reading the sixth book by the paraffine lamp till ten o’clock, 
and then went contentedly to. a bedroom which suggested 
ghosts, or at least nightmare. 

No deadly visions troubled him, however, for the slow train 
had brought about a condition of abject weariness which re- 
sulted in dreamless slumbers. The sun shone into his bleak 
bed-chamber when he awoke next morning, and the lake 
stretched beneath his windows, shining, silvery, melting dimly 
into the gray of the opposite shore. The mountains were 
sulking still, and only showed their rugged crests above dark, 
rolling clouds; but the scene was an improvement upon the 
stony vista and distant glimpse of a murky Thames as seen 
from Ferret Court. 


168 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


His landlord greeted him in a more cheerful spirit upon 
Monday morning than he had evinced on Sunday evening, 
when his after-dinner lethargy was rudely disturbed by a guest 
whose business-like air and small Gladstone bag did not prom- 
ise much profit; a visitor who would want a dinner off the 
joint, most likely, and a half-crown breakfast; a visitor whose 
libations would be limited to Bitter beer and an occasional 
whisky and soda. Such a guest in a house that was beginning 
to hibernate was a burden rather than a boon. 

This morning, however, the landlord was reconciled to his 
solitary customer, having told his wife that, after all, “ little 
fish are sweet, and he went blithely to order the dog-cart — 
his own cart and own man — hostler in the season; coachman, 
or anything you please out of the season — to drive Mr. Dal- 
brook to Kettisford Vicarage, a nine-mile journey. 

It was a pretty, old, out-of-the-way nook — half hidden in a 
cleft of the hills — at which Theodore arrived a few minutes 
after noon; a little old-fashioned, world-forgotten village, and 
a sprawling old gray stone house, covered with Virginia 
creeper, passion-flower, and the feathery leafage of the trum- 
pet-ash; a long^ low house, with heavily thatched roof project- 
ing over its upper casements; a sleepy-looking old house, in a 
still sleepier garden, so remote and so sheltered that winter 
had forgotten to come there; and the great yellow roses were 
still blooming on the wall, fattened by the misty atmosphere 
of the adjacent lake, glorified by the untainted air. Novem- 
ber was half over, yet here the only signs of autumn were the 
gray sky and the crimson glow of the Virginia creeper. 

The Vicar of Kettisford w^as one of those privileged persons 
who can speak with their enemies at the gate, assured of being 
backed up in their speech by a family contingent. The vicar- 
age had an air of overflowing with young life from the very 
threshold of the hall, where cricket-bats, a tricycle, a row of 
well-used tennis-rackets, a stupendous array of hats, overcoats, 
and comforters, testified to the quiverful so esteemed in the 
patriarchal age. 

A conscientious performer was pounding at the ‘‘ Har- 
monious Blacksmith upon a wiry piano near at hand, having 
left the door wide open, with the indecent disregard of other 
people peculiar to juvenile performers upon all kinds of in- 
struments. From the other side of the hall came the twang- 
ing of an equally wiry guitar, upon which girlish fingers began, 
and forever recommenced, a Spanish melody, which the 
performer was, striving to attain by that agonizing process 
known among young ladies as “ picking up an air. Mark, 


THE DAY WILL COME. 169 

reader, what the learned and reverend Haweis has to say upon 
this art of playing by ear! 

From a remoter room came young voices and young laugh- 
ter; and, amid all these sounds, it was hardly surprising that 
Mr. Dalbrook had to ring three times, and to wait in front of 
the open hall door for at least ten minutes, before an elderly 
house-maid responded to his summons and ushered him into 
the vicar^s study, the one room in the vicarage which was ever 
fit to receive a visitor. 

The vicar was reading a newspaper, in front of a comfort- 
able fire. He was an elderly man, of genial and even Jovial 
aspect, and he received Mr. Dalbrook^s apologetic account of 
himself and his business with perfect good-humor. 

“ You want to see Miss -Newton, my dear sir. I am sorry 
to tell you she left us nearly two years ago — heartily sorry, for 
Sarah Newton is a very worthy woman, and a Jewel of price 
in a motherless family- like mine,'’’ said the vicar. “ I regret 
that you should have come such a long way to find her when, 
had you written to me, I could have told you where to look 
for her in London. ” 

“ Yes, it was a mistake to come so far without making pre- 
liminary inquiries — only, as she had not applied to her usual 
agent for a new situation, I concluded that she was still under 
your roof. ” 

“She has V not gone into a new situation, Mr. Dalbrook. 
She was too much valued in this house to wish to change to 
another employment, although she might have lived more lux- 
uriously and done less work elsewhere. She was a mother to 
my girls — ay, and to my boys as well — while she was with us; 
and she only left us when she made up hei; mind to live an in- 
dependent life.” 

“ She has left off teaching, then, I conclude?” 

“ Yes. She had a little bit of money left her by a bachelor 
uncle, safely invested in railway stock, and yielding about two 
hundred a year. This, with her own savings, made her an 
independent woman, and she made up her mind to realize her 
own ideal of a useful life — an ideal which had been developing 
in her mind for a good many years — a life which was to be 
serviceable to others, and yet pleasant to herself. ” 

“ Do you mean that she Joined some sisterhood?” 

“ No, no, Mr. Dalbrook, Sarah Newton is much too fond 
of her own way, much too independent and fiery a spirit, to 
place herself in a position where other people would , think for 
her, and where she woqld be obliged to obey. She told me 
her plan of life very frankly. ‘ I have about two hundred and 


170 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


sixty pounds a year/ she said; ‘ I can live comfortably upon 
half that money, if I live after a plan of my own; and I can 
do a great deal of good with the other half if I do it in my 
own way. I am elderly and plain. If I were to live among 
small gentilities I should be a nobody, and in all probability I 
should be considered a bore. I shall take a lodging in a poor 
neighborhood, furnish my rooms with the utmost comfort, 
treat myself to a good piano, and collect my little library, 
book by book, from the second-hand book-shops. I shall 
spend half my days in going quietly about among the poor 
young women of the district. I ought to know what girls ai-e 
after nearly forty years ^ teaching and managing the species — 
and I shall spend half my income in doing as much good to 
them as I can, in my own unorthodox way. ^ I knew the good 
that brave little soul had done in this parish, in her quiet, un-. 
pretentious fashion, and I felt no doubt she would carry out 
her plan.^^ 

Have you seen her since she left you?^^ 

“ Yes, I went to see her last June when 1 had a fortnight's 
holiday in London. I found her in a shabby old house in 
Lambeth, not very far from St. Thomas^’s Hospital; but dingy 
as tiie house looked outside, our good Sally^s apartments were 
the picture of comfort. I found her as happy as a bird. Her 
plan of life had answered her highest expectations. ‘ My 
friends are legion,'’ she said, ‘ but I haven^s a single gentility 
among them.’’ Sa<ily is a desperate Kadical, you must know. '’ 

“ Will you give me her address, that 1 may write and ask 
her permission to call upon 'her 

‘‘You shall have the address, but I doubt if she will feel 
disposed to receive you. She will count you among the gen- 
tilities.'’'’ 

“ I must try my chance, at any rate. I want her to give 
me some light upon the history of one of her earliest pupils. 
Did you ever hear her talk of Cheriton Chase and the Strang- 
way family 

“ My dear sir, 1 have heard her talk of any number of 
places, and any number of people. I used to tell her she must 
be a female Methuselah to have jiassed through so many ex- 
periences. She was very fond of telling stories of the families 
in which she had lived, but, though 1 used to listen, I remem- 
ber very little about them. My girls would remember better, 
I have no doubt. They can give you chapter and verse, 1 
dare say; so the best thing you can do is to eat your luncheon 
with us, and then you can ask them as many questions as you 
like.-’^ 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


171 


Theodore accepted the offer with gratitude, and ten minutes 
afterward followed the vicar into the dining-room, where three 
tall, good-looking girls and two straggling youths were assem- 
bled, and where a fourth girl and another boy dropped in after 
the rest were seated. The board was spread with a plenteous 
but homely meal. A large dish of Irish stew smoked at one 
end of the table, and the remains of yesterday^s roast ribs of 
beef appeared at the other. 

The girls were evidently accustomed to droppers-in, and re- 
ceived Theodore with perfect equanimity. 

Alicia, the eldest, carved the beef with a commanding wrist, 
and the third daughter, Laura, administered to his appetite 
with pickled walnuts and mashed potatoes. The. girls were all 
keenly interested directly he spoke of Miss Newton. They 
pronounced her a dear old thing, not a bit like a governess. 

We all loved her,^^ said Alipia; “ and we are not the 
easiest girls to get on with, I can assure you. We have had 
two poor things since Sally deserted us, and we have driven 
them both away. And now we are enjoying an interregnum, 
and we hope the dear father will make it a long one.^^ 

‘‘ Did you ever hear your governess talk of the Strang- 
ways?^^ 

“ What, Evelyn Strang way of Cheriton Chase? I should 
think we did, indeed,^^ cried Laura. “ She had a good many 
prosy stories— -chestnuts, we used to call them — but the Cheri- 
ton Chase stories were the most chestnutty. It was her first 
situation, and she was never tired of talking about it. 

‘ ‘ Do you know if she kept up her acquaintance with Miss 
.'Strangway in after-life?’ ' asked Theodore. 

‘‘ I think not, at any rate she never talked about that^ She 
knew something about the poor girl’s later life — something 
very bad, I think — for she would never tell us. She used to 
sigh and look very unhappy if the subject was touched upon; 
and she used to warn us against runaway matches. As if any 
of us would be likely to run away from this dear old father!” 
protested Laura, leaning over the table to pat the vicar’s coat- 
sleeve. “ Why, he would let us marry chimney-sweeps rather 
than see us unhappy. ” 

There was a good deal more talk about Sarah Newton, her 
virtues and her little peculiarities, but nothing bearing upon 
Theodore’s business, so he only stayed till luncheon was fin- 
ished, and then wished the amiable vicar and his family a 
friendly good-bye, offering to be of use to them in London at 
any time they might want some small business transacted 


m 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


there, V and begging the vicar to look him up at his chambers 
when he took his next hqliday. 

“You may rely upon it I shall take you at your word/' said 
the parson, cheerily. “ You've no idea what a gay old dog I 
am when I am in town — the theater every night, and a little 
bit of supper afterward. I generally take one of my lads with 
me, though, to keep me out of mischief. Good-bye, and mind 
you don't fall in love with Sally Newton. She's old and ugly, 
but she's one of the most fascinating women I know." ^ 

Theodore drove off irr the dog-cart, with all the vicarage 
family at the gate waving their hands to him, as if he had 
been an old friend, and with four vicarage dogs barking at 
him. 

He went back to London that night, and wrote to Miss 
Newton, asking leave to c^ll upon her, upon a matter relating 
to one of her old pupils, on the following day. He should 
take silence to mean consent, and would be with her at four in 
the afternoon, if he did not receive a telegram to forbid him. * 

He worked in his chambers all the morning, and at a little 
after three set out to walk to Lambeth. The address was 51 
Wedge wood Street, near the Lambeth Eoad. It was not a 
long walk, and it was not a pleasant one, for a seasonable fog 
was gathering when Theodore left the Temple, and it thick- 
ened as he crossed Westminster Bridge, where the newly light- 
ed lamps made patches ,of yellow light in the dull brown atmos- 
phere. Under these conditions it took him some time to find 
Wedge wood Street and that particular house which had the 
honor of sheltering Sarah Newton. 

It was a very shabby old street. The shops were of the 
meanest order, and the houses which were not shops looked as 
if they were mostly let off to the struggling class of lodgers; 
but it was a street that had evidently seen better days, for the 
houses were large and substantially built, and the door-ways 
had once been handsome and architectural — houses which had 
been the homes of prosperous citizens when Lambeth was out 
of town, and when the perfume of bean blossom and new- 
mown hay found its way into Wedgewood Street. 

The ground floor of No. 51 was occupied by a shoe-maker 
who had turned his parlor into a shop, who made to measure, 
but was not above executing repairs neatly. The front door 
being open, Theodore walked straight upstairs to the first-floor 
landing, where there was a neat little Doulton-ware oil-lamp 
burning on a little Swiss bracket, and where he saw Miss New- 
ton's name painted in bold black letters upon a terra-cotta 


THE BAY WILL COME. 173 

colored door. The stairs were cleaner than they generally are 
in such a house, and the landing was spotless. 

He rang a bell, and the door was promptly opened by a lady 
whom he took to be Miss Newton. She was rather below mid- 
dle height, strongly built, but of a neat, compact figure. She 
was decidedly plain, an^d her iron-gray hair was coarse and 
wiry; but she had large, bright eyes which beamed with good- 
nature and intelligence. Her black stuff gown and narrow 
linen collar, the knot of scarlet ribbon at her throat, and the 
linen cuffs turned back over perfectly fitting sleeves were all 
the perfection of neatness, and suited her as no other kind of 
dress would have done. The trim, neat figure, the bright 
eyes, and the small, white hands made a favorable impression 
on Theodore, in spite of the lady^s homeliness of feature and 
complexion. 

“ Walk in, Mr. Dalbrook,^^ she said, cheerily. ‘‘ Pray come 
and sit by the fire. You must be chilled to the bone after 
coming through that horrid fog. Ah, how I hate fog! It is 
the scourge of the London poor, and it sometimes kills even 
the rich. And now we are only at the beginning of' the evil, 
and there is the long winter before us.^’ 

“ Yes, it is very bad, no doubt; but you do not look as if 
the fog could do you much harm. Miss Newton. 

“No, it wonT hurt me. I’m a hardy old plant, and I con- 
trive to makp myself comfortable at all seasons.’^ 

“ You do, indeed,” he answered, glancing round the room. 
“ I had no idea — ” 

“ That anybody could be so comfortable in Lambeth,” she 
said, interpreting his thoughts. “ No, people think they 
must pay for what they call ‘ a good situation.’ Poor pinched 
widows and shabby spinsters spend more than half their income 
on rent and taxes, and starve on the other half, in order to 
live in tt, genteel locality — some dingy little street in Pimlico, 
perhaps, or a stucco terrace in Kensington. Here am I with 
two fine, large rooms in a forgotten old street, which was built 
before the age of shoddy. I live among poor people, and am 
not obliged to sacrifice a sixpence for the sake of appearances. 
I buy everything in the cheapest market, and my neighbors 
look up to nte, instead of looking down upon me, as they might 
if I lived among gentilities. You will say, perhaps, that I 
live in the midst of dirt and squalor. If I do I take care that 
none of it ever comes near me, and I do all that one woman’s 
voice and one woman’s pen can do to lessen the evils that I 
see about me. ” 

“ It would be a good thing for poor neighborhoods if there 


174 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


were many ladies of your mind, Miss Newton/^ said Theodore, 
basking in the glow of the fire and looking lazily round the 
room, with its two well-filled book-cases filling the recesses on 
each side of the fire-place; its brackets and shelves and hang- 
ing pockets; its large old-fashioned sofa and substantial claw- 
footed table; its cheap basket chairs, cushioned with bright 
color; its lamps and candlesticks on ^elf and bracket, ready 
to the hand when extra light should be wanted; its contriv- 
ances and handinesses of all kinds, which denoted the womanly 
inventiveness of the tenant. 

Well, I believe it would. If only a small percentage of 
the lonely spinsters of England would make their abode among 
the poor, things would have to be mended somehow. There 
could not be such crying evils as there are if there were more 
eyes to see them, and more voices to protest against them. You 
like this old room of mine, I see, Mr. Dalbrook,^^ added Sarah 
Newton, following his eyes as they surveyed the dark-red wall 
against which the brackets and shelves, and books and photo- 
graphs, and bits of old china stood out in bright relief. 

“ I am full of admiration and surprise 

“It is all my own work. I had lived im other people^s 
houses so long that I was charmed to have a home of my own, 
even in Lambeth. I was determined to spend very little 
money, and yet to make myself comfortable; so I just squatted 
in the next room for the first three months, with only a bed- 
stead, a table, and a chair or two, while I prowled all over 
London to find just the furniture I wanted. There’s not an 
article in the room that did not take me weeks to find and to 
buy, and there’s not an article that wasn’t a tremendous bar- 
gain. But what an egotistical old prattler I am! Women who 
live much alone get to be dreadful prosers. I won’t say an- 
other word about myself — at any rate not till after I’ve made 
you a cup of tea after your cold walk.” 

She had seen the mud upon his boots and guessed that he 
had walked from the Temple. 

“ Pray do not take any trouble — ” 

“ Nonsense; it is never trouble to a woman to make tea. I 
give a tea party twice a week. I hope you like tea?” 

“ I adore it; but pray go on with your account of how you 
settled down here. I am warmly interested. ” 

“ That’s very good of you — but there’s not much to tell 
about myself,” said Miss Newton, producing some pretty old 
china out of an antique cupboard with glass doors, and setting 
out a little brass tea-tray while she talked. There was a 
small copper kettle singing on the old-fashioned hob, and 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


175 


there was a covered dish of toast in the capacious fender. 
Miss Newton’s dinners were ever of the slightest, hut she was 
a sybarite as to her tea. No cheap and powdery mixture; no 
“ inferior Dosset ” for her. She made her brew with a dainty 
precision which Theodore admired, while she went on talking. 

‘‘ Do you like the color of the walls? Yes, I painted them. 
And you like that paper on the ceiling? I papered it. I am 
rather a dab at carpentering, too, and 1 put up all those 
shelves and brackets, and I covered the chairs, and stained the 
boards round that old Turkey carpet; and then, after a day’s 
hard work, it was very pleasant to go and stroll about among 
the bookshops of an evening and pick up a volume here and 
there till I got all my old friends about me. 1 felt like Elia; 
only I had no Bridget to share my pleasures. ” 

She seated herself opposite to him, with a wicker table in 
front of her, and began to pour out the tea. He wondered to 
find himself as much at home with her as if he had known 
her all his life. 

“ It is very good of you to receive me so cordially,” he said, 
presently. “ I feel that I come to you as an unauthorized in- 
truder.” 

“ Can you guess why I was willing to receive you?” she 
asked, looking at him intently and with a sudden gravity. 
“ Can you guess why I didn’t telegraph to forbid your com- 
ing?” 

‘‘ Indeed, no, except because you are naturally kind.” 

‘‘ My kindness had nothing to do with it. I was willing to 
see you because of your name. It i^a very familiar name to 
me — Dalbrook, the name of the man who bought the house in 
which she was born. Poor soul, how she must have hated, him 
in her desolate after years — how she must have hated the race 
that ousted her from the home she loved!” 

“ You are talking of Evelyn Strangway?”’ 

“ Yes, she was my first pupil, and I was very fond of her — 
all the fonder of her, perhaps, because she was wayward and 
difficult to manage; and because I was much too young and 
inexperienced to exercise any authority over her.” 

‘‘ It is of her I want to talk to you, if you will allow me.” 

“ Certainly. I like talking of those old days when I was a 
girl. I don’t suppose I was particularly happy at Cheriton 
Chase; but I was young, and we most of us hug that delusion, 
and, believe we were happy in our youth. Poor Evelyn — so 
often in disgrace— so often unhappy, from the very dawn of 
girlhood! What reason can you have for being curious about 
her?” 


176 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ I have a very strong reason, though I can not explain it 
yet awhile. 1 have set myself to discover the history of that 
banished race.^^ 

“ After the angel with the flaming sword stood at the gate — 
that is to say, after Mr. Dalbrook bought the property? By 
the bye, what are you to Lord Cheriton? His son, perhaps 
“No; lam only a second cousin. 

“ Is it on his account you are making these inquiries?^ ^ 

“ He is not even aware that 1 am making them. 

“ Indeed, and pray how did you find me out? My tea- 
parties are not recorded in the society papers. I have never 
figured among ‘ Celebrities at Home. ^ 

“ I took some pains to find you,^' said Theodore, and then 
he told her of his visits to the agencies and his journey to the 
vicarage in Lakeland. 

“ You have taken infinite trouble, and for so small a result. 
1 can give you very little information about Evelyn Strang- 
way — afterward Mrs. Darcy. 

“ Did you lose sight of her after you left Cheriton?^^ 

“ Yes, for a long time. It was years before we met again, 
but she wrote to me several times from Lausanne, during the 
first year of her banishment, poor child, doleful letters, com- 
plaining bitterly of her father^s cruelty m keeping her away 
from her beloved Cheriton — the horses and dogs, the life she 
loved. School she detested. She was clever, but she had no 
taste for intellectual pursuits. She soon wearied of the lake 
and the mountains, and the humdrum society of a ^mall town. 
She wrote of herself as a -galley slave. Then came a sudden 
change, and she began to write about him. You donT know 
the way a girl writes about • him; the first him she has ever 
thought worthy to be written about. Her tone was light 
enough at the beginning. She had met a young Irishman at 
a little evening party, and they had laughed together at Lau- 
sanne society. He was an officer, on furlough, full of wit and 
fun. I need not go into details. I saw her danger, and warned 
her; I reminded her that her father would never allow her to 
marry a subaltern in a marching regiment, and that such a 
marriage would mean starvation. Her father could give her 
nothing; it was incumbent on her to marry well, and with her 
attractions she had only to wait for a good offer. It would 
inevitably come in due time.^^ 

^ “ She was handsome, I suppose? I know her face in the 
picture at Cheriton. My cousin bought all the old portraits.^'’ 
“She was much handsomer than the picture. That was 
painted when she was only fifteen but at seventeen her beauty 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


177 


had developed and she was one of the most brilliant blondes 1 
ever saw. TV ell, I suppose you know how useless my advice 
was. She ran away with her Irish ensign, and I heard no 
^lore of her for nearly four years, when 1 met her one after- 
noon in the Strand, and she took me home to her lodging in 
Cecil Street, and gave me some tea. It was in October, and I 
stayed with her till dark, and then she insisted on seeing me 
off in the omnibus to Haverstock Hill, where 1 was then living 
in an artistes family. The lodgings were shabby, and she was 
shabbily dressed. She was as handsome as ever, but she looked 
worried and unhappy. Her husband had sold out of the army 
and had a position as secretary to a West End club. 

“ She told me that they would have been pretty well off but 
for his* extravagance. He was getting four hundred a year, 
and they had no children. She complained that it was her 
fate to be allied with spendthrifts. Her father had squandered 
his fortune, and her husbaud^s improvident habits kept her in 
continual debt and difficulty. It grieved me to see the shabbi- 
ness of her surroundings — the squalid lodging-house parlor, 
without so much as a bunch of flowers or a stand of books to 
show that it was in the occupation of a lady. There was a 
cigar box on the mantel-piece, and there was a heap of news- 
papers on the sofa and a pair of shabby slippers inside the 
fender. It was a room to make one shudder. I asked her if 
she was reconciled to her father, and she said no; she had 
heard nothing of him since her marriage. I felt very unhappy 
about her after we parted at Hungerford Market. I saw her 
standing on the pavement as the omnibus drove away, a tall, 
slim figure, distinguished-looking, in spite of her shabby velvet 
mantle and rusty black silk gown. I had promised to go and 
see her again, though I was very seldom at liberty at that 
time, and I went to Cecil Street two or three times in the 
course of the winter, but she was always out, and there was 
something in the tone of her letters. that made me think she 
did not wish to see me again, though I believe she was fond of 
me always, poor soul. 1 saw nothing more of her, and heard 
nothing, until nearly four years afterward, when I was spend- 
ing an afternoon at Richmond with my pupils — two girls of 
fourteen and sixteen — and I came face to face with her in 
front of Thomson^’s Seat. She was with a tall, handsome man, 
whom at first I took to be her husband; but there was some- 
thing in the manner of both of them that impressed me un- 
comfortably, and I began to fear that this was not her hus- 
band. She looked better and brighter than when I saw her in 
Cecil Street, and she was better dressed — very plainly, but in 


178 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


excellent taste. She took me aside a little way^ while her 
companion stood and talked to two girls. She put her arm 
through mine in her old, caressing way, and then she said, 
abruptly: ‘ I almost wonder that you will speak to me. I 
thought you would have cut me dead.-’ I looked puzzled, no 
doubt, so she said: ‘Perhaps you don’t know what a lost 
creature 1 am. Perhaps you have not heard.*’ I told her I 
had heard nothing about her since we parted at Hungerford 
Market, and then she gave a deep sigh, and said: “ Well, I 
am not going to deceive you. That,’ with a nod of her head 
toward the man, who was standing with his back to us, ‘ is not 
my husband, but he and I are bound together for the rest of 
our lives, and we are perfectly happy together. Society would 
scorn us and trample upon us, no doubt, if we gave it a 
chance; but we don’t. We live out of the world, and we live 
for one another. Now, ar’n’t you shocked with me? Don’t 
you want to run away?’ she asked, with a little laugh which I 
knew was more hysterical than mirthful. 1 told her that 1 
was very sorry for her. I could say no more than that. ‘ You 
would be sorrier still if you could picture to yourself the 
miserable life I led before I left my husband,’ she said. ‘ 1 
bore it for five years, years that were like an eternity. He 
cared for me no more than for the flower-girls in the street. 
He left me to pine in my dingy lodging, left me to be dunned 
and worried all day long, left me out-at-elbows, ashamed of 
my own shabbiness, while he amused himself at his club; and 
then he thought himself cruelly used when he found out there 
was another man in the world who thought me worth caring 
for, and when I told him I loved that man with all my heart. 
My leaving him was the impulse of a moment. The moment 
came when I felt mad and desperate, and 1 ran out of the 
house in my despair, and jumped into the first cab I could 
hail, and drove away to pointing to the man in the dis- 
tance, strolling beside my two gawky girls, ‘ and to happiness. 
1 am a wicked wretch, no doubt, to be happy under such cir- 
cumstances, but I am; or, at any rate, as happy as anybody 
can hope to be in this world. There is always a thorn among 
the flowers,’ she sighed, as if the thorn were a big one, 1 
thought. ‘ I suppose I shall never see you again,’ she said. 
‘ When we say good-:bye presently it will be farewell forever. ’ 
I '^old her that was not inevitable. I was my own mistress, 
free to choose my friends. I told her that if ever she had need 
of a friend I would go to her. I felt that I was in some wise 
answerable for the bad turn her life had taken, for, had I been 
a more judicious counselor, I might have guided her better. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


179 


might have prevented her coming into collision with her 
father. I asked her for her address, but she told me she had 
promised to tell nobody where she lived. ‘ We are living out 
of the world/ she said; ‘ we have no visitors, no friends or ac- 
quaintances. She clasped my hands, kissed me, and hurried 
away to rejoin the man whose name I never learned. He 
lifted his hat to me and the girls, and they walked away to- 
gether toward the Star and Garter, leaving us standing by 
Thomson's Seat, staring idly at the landscape in the. summer 
sunlight. I felt dazed as I stood there, looking down into that 
lovely valley. It had been a terrible shock to me to meet her 
again under such circumstances.^^ 


CHAPTER XV. 

“ Be useful where thou livest, that they may 
Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still. 

All worldly joys grow less 

To the one joy of doing kindnesses. ’ ’ 

“ What impression did the man make upon you m that brief 
meeting?^^ asked Theodore. “ Did he strike you as a roue 
“ No; that was the odd part of the business. He. had the 
steady, respectable air of a bread-winner, a professional or 
perhaps a commercial man. 1 could not tell which. There 
was nothiug flashy or dissipated in his appearance. He looked 
me steadily in the face when he bowed to me at parting, and 
he had a frank, straightforward expression, and a grave de- 
cision of manner that was not without dignity. He was soberly 
dressed in a style that attracted no attention. I had no' doubt 
that he was a gentleman. 

“ He was handsome, you say?? 

‘‘ Yes; he was decidedly handsome — but I can remember 
only the general character of his^face, not features or details, 
for I saw him only twice in my life. 

“ Ah, you saw him again, then?^^ 

“ Once again — some years later, after her death. 

‘‘ She is dead, then?^^ cried Theodore; ‘‘ that is the fact I 
have been trying to learn from any reliable source of informa- 
tion. There was a rumor of her death years ago, but no one 
could give me any evidence of the fact. I went to Boulogne 
last week to try and trace her to her last resting-place, but I 
could discover neither tombstone nor record of any kind. ” 

“ And yet it was at Boulogne she died. 1 will tell you all 1 
know about her if vou like. It doesnT amount to much. 


180 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ Pray tell me everything you can. I am deeply grateful to 
you for having treated me with so much frankness. 

It was on her account I received you. I am glad to talk 
to any one who is interested in her pitiful fate. There were 
so few to care for her. I think there is no lot more sad than 
that of a broken-down gentleman^s daughter, born to an in- 
heritance she is never to enjoy, brought up to think of herself 
as a personage with a right to the world’s respect, and finding 
herself friendless and penniless, in the bloom of her womanhood 
exposed to the world’s contumely. ” 

Theodore’s face flushed a little at this mention of his interest 
in the squire’s daughter, for he could but feel that the inter- 
est was of a sinister kind; but he held his peace, and Miss 
Newton 'went on with her story. 

^ “It was ever so many years after that meeting in Rich- 
mond Park — I think it must have been nearly ten years — when 
I ran against that very man, upon a windy March day, in 
Folkestone. I had thought much and often of my poor girl 
in all those years, wondering how the world had used her and 
whether tliat man whom she trusted so implicitly had been 
true to her. I shuddered at the thought of what her fate 
might have been if he were false. I had never heard a word 
about her in all that time. 1 had seen no report of a divorce 
suit in the papers. , 1 knew absolutely nothing of her history 
from the hour I parted with her by Thomson’s Seat till 1 ran 
against that man in Folkestone. I am rather shy about 
speaking to strangers in a general way; but I was so anxious 
to know her fate that I stopped this man, whose very name 
was unknown to me, and asked him to tell me about my poor 
friend. He looked bewildered, as well he might, at being 
pounced upon in that manner. I explained that I was Evelyn 
Strang way’s old governess, and that I was uneasy at having 
lost sight of her for so many years, and was very anxious to see 
her again. He looked troubled at my question, and he an- 
swered me, gravely: ‘ I am sorry to say you will never do that. 
Your friend is dead.’ I asked "him when she had died, and 
where. He told me within the last month, and at Boulogne. 
I asked if he were with her at the last, and he said no; and 
then he lifted his hat and muttered something about having 
very little time to get to the station. He was going to London 
by the next train, it seemed, and he was evidently anxious to 
shake me off — but I was determined he should answer at least 
one more question. ‘Was her husband with her when she 
died?’ I asked. His face darkened at the question, which 1 
suppose was a foolish one. ‘ Ho you think it likely?’ he said. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


181 


trying to move past me; but I had laid my hand upon his 
sleeve, in my eagerness. ‘ Pray tell me that her end was not 
unhappy — and that she was penitent for her sins.^ He looked 
very angry at this. ‘ If I stand here talking to you another 
minute I shall lose my train, madame,^ he said, ‘ and 1 have 
important business in London this afternoon.^ A fly came 
strolling by at this moment. He hailed it and jumped in, and 
he drove off into what Thomas Carlyle would call the immen- 
sities. I never saw him again; I never knew his name or call- 
ing or place of abode, or anything about him. 1 can no more 
localize him than I can Goethe’s Mephistopheles. God knows 
how he treated my poor girl — whether he was kind or cruel; 
whether he was faithful to a dishonorable tie, or whether he 
held it as lightly as such ties have been held by the majority 
of men from the age of Ahraliam downward.” 

The little woman’ face flushed and her eyes filled as she 
gave vent to her feelings. 

And this is all you know of Evelyn Strangway?” said 
Theodore, when she had finished. 

“ This is all 1 know of her. And now tell me why you are 
so anxious to learn her history — you who can never have seen 
her face, except -in the picture at Cheriton. I dressed her for 
that picture, and sat by while it was painted. ” 

“I will tell you the motive vof my curiosity,” answered 
Theodore, “ You have treated me so frankly that I feel I 
must not withhold my confidence from you. 1 know that I 
can rely upon your discretion. ” 

“ I can talk, as you have just, heard,” said Miss Newton; 
“ but 1 can be as silent as the grave when I like.” 

. “ You must have read something about the murder at 
Cheritpn last July. ■' 

‘ ‘ 1 read a great deal about it. 1 took a morbid interest in 
the case, knowing the house so" well, in every cranny and 
corner. I could picture the scene' as vividly as if I had seen 
the murdered man lying there. A most inexplicable murder, 
apparently motiveless.” 

Apparently motiveless. That fact has so preyed upon the 
poor widow’s mind that she has imagined a motive. She has 
a strange fancy that one of the Strangways must have been 
the author of the crime. She has brooded^ over their images 
till her whole mind has become possessed with the idea of one 
of that banished race garnering his wrath for long years, until 
at last the hour came for a bloody revenge, and then striking, 
his death-blow out of the dark — striking his fatal blow and 
vanishing from the sight of men, as if a phantom arm had 


182 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


been stretched out of the night to deal that death-blow. She 
had asked me to help her in discoverig the murderer, and 1 am 
pledged to do my utmost toward that end. I am the more 
anxious to do so as I tremble for the consequences if she should 
be allowed to brood long upon this morbid fancy about the 
Strang ways. I think, however, that, with your help, I have 
now laid that ghost. I have traced the two brothers to their 
graves, and I suppose we may accept the statement of the man 
you met at Folkestone as sufficient evidence of Mrs. Darcy’s 
death; especially as it seems to fit in with the account of the 
then vicar of Cheriton, who met her in Boulogne, in the sum- 
mer of ’64, looking very ill and much aged.” 

“ It was in the spring of ’65 I met that man at Folkestone. 

I could find the date in my diary if you wished to be very 
precise about it, for it is one of my old-maidish ways to be 
very regular in keeping my diary. Poor Evelyn! To think 
that any one should be wild enough to suspect her of being 
capable of murder — or Fred or Reginald. They had the 
Strangway temper, all three of them, and a fiery temper it 
was when it was roused, a temper that led to family quarrels 
and all sorts of unhappiness; but murder is a different kind of 
thing. ” 

“That is the question,” said Theodore, gravely. “Is 
there such a wide gulf between the temper that makes family 
quarrels, sets father against son and brother against brother, 
and the temper that pulls a trigger or uses a bowie-knife? I 
thought they were one and the same thing in actual quality, 
and that the result was dependent upon circumstances.” 

“ Oh, don’t talk like that, please. Murder is something ex- 
ceptional— a hideous solecism in nature — and in this case why 
murder? What had Sir Godfrey Carmichael done that any 
member of the Strangway family should want to kill him?” 

“ I tell you that the idea is a wild one, the morbid growth 
of my cousin’s sorrow.” 

“ Of course it is. I am very sorry for her, poor soul. I 
don’t suppose any woman could suffer more than she must 
have done, and live. It is a dreadful story. And she was 
very fond of her husband, I dare say.” 

“ She adored him. They had been lovers almost from her 
childhood. There never were a more devoted bride and bride- 
groom. Their honey-moon was not beginning to wane. They 
were still lovers, still in a state of sweet surprise at finding 
themselves husband and wife. Poor girl, I saw her the day 
before the murder, a brilliau' creature, the very spirit of joy. ^ 
I saw her the morning after, a specter, with awful eyes and 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


183 


marble face — more dreadful to look upon than her murdered 
husband on his'bed of death. 

“ It is all too sad/^ sighed Miss Newton. “ I begin to 
think that Cheriton is a fatal house, and that no one can pos- 
sibly be happy there. However, you can tell this poor lady 
that the Strangways are exonerated from any part in her 
misery. 

“ 1 shall write to her to-night to that effect. And now. 
Miss Newton, let me thank you once more for your friendly 
frankness, and wish you good"-night.^^ 

“ Don’t be in such a- hurry, Mr. Dalbrook. I like your 
face, and I should like to ^e you again some day, if you can 
find time to waste an hour upon an old maid in such a God- 
forsaken place as Wedgewood Street.’’ 

“ 1 shall think an hour so spent most delightfully em- 
ployed,” answered Theodore, who was quite subjugated by 
the charm of this little person and her surroundings. He did 
not remember having ever sat in a room he liked better than 
this first-floor front in Wedgewood Street, with its terra-cotta 
walls, and prettily bound books, and curious oddments of old 
china, and comfortable curtains of work-house sheeting, with a 
bold Vermillion bolder worked by Sarah Newton’s indefatigable 
fingers. 

I should very much like to hear all about your life in this 
-—strange neighborhood,” he said. 

“ There is not much to tell. When my little fortune — left 
by my uncle, the drysalter — fell to me 1 was a lonely old 
woman, without one surviving relative for whom I cared two- 
pence. I was pretty tired of teaching French and German — 
God knows how many hundred times I must have gone through 
Ollendorf in both languages — and I’ve done him a good many 
times in Italian par dessus le marche. Perhaps I might have 
held on for a year or two longer, as 1 was very fond of those 
nice girls and *boys at Kettisford Vicarage, if it hadn’t been 
for Ollendorf. He decided me. Leila, the youngest girl, had 
only just begun that accursed book. She was blundering over 
the baker’s golden candlestick the very morning 1 got the 
lawyer’s letter to tell me of my uncle’s death, and the will 
and the legacy. I snatched the book out of her hand, and 
shut it with a ban^. ‘ Ain’t I to do any more Ollendorf, 
Sally?’ she asked. ‘ You may do as much as you like, my 
love,’ I said, ‘ but you’ll do no more with me. I’m a million- 
aire, or at least I feel as rich and independent as if I were a 
Kothschild. ’ Well, I lay awake all that night making plans 
for my life, and trying to think out how I could get the most 


184 


THE DAY WILL COMK 


happiness and comfort out of my little fortune, enjoy my de- 
clining years, have everything I wanted, and yet be of some 
use to my fellow-creatures; and the end of it was that I made 
up my mind to take a roomy lodging in a poor neighborhood, 
where I should not be tempted to spend a penny upon appear- 
ances, furnish it after my own heart, and make myself happy 
in just my own way, without caring a straw what anybody 
thought about me. I knew that I was plain, as well as elderly, 
that I could never be admired or cut a figure in the genteel 
world, so 1 determined to renounce the gentilities altogether 
and to be looked up to in a little world of my own.'’ 

“ And you have found your plan answer — " 

“ It has answered beyond my hopes. Ever since 1 was 
thirty years of age and had done with all young ideas and day- 
dreams, I had one particular ideal of earthly happiness, and 
that was the position of a country squire's wife — an energetic, 
active, well-meaning woman, the central figure in a rural vil- 
lage, having her model cottages and her allotment gardens, 
her infirmary, her mission-house — the good genius of her little 
community, a queen in miniature, and without political en- 
ta»glements or menace of foreign war. Now, it could never 
be my lot to reign on a landed estate, to build cottages, or cut 
up fertile meadows for cottagers’ gardens; but 1 thought by 
taking up my abode in a poor neighborhood, and visiting 
quietly, and in a friendly, familiar way — no tracts or preach- 
ings — among the most respectable of the inhabitants, and 
slowly feeling my way among the difficult subjects, I might 
gradually acquire an infiuence just as, strong as that of the 
Lady Bountiful in a country parish, and might come to be as 
useful in my small way as the squire’s wife with her larger 
means. And I have done it,” added Miss Newton, triumph- 
antly. “ There are rooms in this street and in other streets 
that are to me my model cottages. There are overworked, 
uuder-fed women who look up to me as their Providence; 
there are children who come and hang to my skirts as I pass 
along the streets; there are great, hulking men who ask mj 
advice and get me to write their letters for them. What could 
a squire’s wife have more than that? And yet I have only a 
hundred and fifty pounds a year to spend upon my people.” 

“You give them something more than money. You give 
them sympathy — the magnetism of your strong and generous 
nature. ” 

“Ah, there is something in that. Magnetism is a good 
word. There must be some reason why people attach them- 
selves so ardently to Mr. Gladstone, don’t you know, some 


TfiE DAT WILL COME. 


185 


charm in him that holds them almost in spite of themselves, 
and makes them think as he thinks, and veer as he veers. 
Yes, they swing round with him like the boats going round 
with the tide, and they can’t help it any more than the boats 
can. And 1 think, to compare small things with great, there 
must be some touch of that magnetic power in me,” concluded 
Miss Newton. 

“lam sure of it,” said Theodore, “ and 1 am sure, too, 
that you must be like a spot of light in this dark little world 
of yours. ” 

“ I live among my friends. That is the point,” explained 
Miss Newton. “ I don’t come from Belgravia, or a bright, 
pretty terrace in Kensington, and tell them they ought to 
keep their wretched rooms cleaner, and open their windows, 
and put flower-pots on their window-sills. 1 live here, and 
they can come and see how I keep my rooms, and judge for 
themselves. Their landlord is my landlord; and a nice life I 
lead him about water and whitewash and drains. He is 
thoroughly afraid of me, I am happy to say, and generally 
bolts round a corner when he sees me in the street; but 1 am 
too quick for his over-fed legs. I tackle him about all his 
short-comings, and he finds it easier to spend a few pounds 
upon his property now and then than to have i7^ upon his 
heels at every turn; so now Crook’s tenements have quite a 
reputation in Lambeth. If you \^ere to see the old dragon you 
would wonder at my pluck in attacking him, 1 can assure you.” 

“ Your whole life is wonderful to me. Miss Newton, and I 
only wish there were hundreds of women in this big city living 
just as you live. Tell me, please, what kind of people your 
neighbors are.” • , 

“ Oh, there are people of all kinds, some, of course, who 
are quite impracticable, for whom I can do nothing; but there 
are many more who are glad of my friendship, and who re- 
ceive me with open arms. The single women and widows are 
my chief friends, and some of those I know as well as if we 
had been brought up and educated upon the same social level. 
They are work-women of all kinds, tailoresses, shirt-makers, 
girls who work for military outfitters, extra hands for court 
dress-makers, shop-girls at the humbler class of shops, shoe- 
binders, artificial flower-makers. I wonder whether you would 
like to see some of them?” 

“ I should like it very much indeed.” 

“ Then perhaps you will come to one of my tea-parties. I 
give two tea-parties a week ail through the winter, to just as 
many of my women friends as this room will hold. It holds 


186 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


about twenty very comfortably, so I make twenty-five the 
outside limit. We rather enjoy a little bit of a crush — and I 
give my invitations so that they all have such little pleasure 
as I can give them, fairly, turn and turn about. We do 
not begin our evening too early, for the working hours are 
precious to my poor things. We take tea at eight o^clock, 
and we seldom separate before half past eleven — just as 
if we were at a theater. We have a little music, and a little 
reading and recitation, sometimes a round game at cards. 
When we are in a wild humor we play dumb-crambo, or 
even puss in the corner; and we have always a great deal of 
talk. We sit round this fire-place in a double half -circle, the 
younger ones sitting on the rug in front of us elders, and we 
talk and talk and talk — about ourselves mostly, -and yoti can^t 
think what good it does us. Surely God gave man speech as 
the universal safety-valve. It lets olf half our troubles and 
half our sense of the world^s injustice. 

“ Please let me come to your very next party, said Theo- 
dore, smiling at the little woman^s ardor. 

“ That will be to-morrow eveniug,^^ replied Miss Newton. 
“ I shall have to make an excuse for your appearance, as we 
very seldom invite a man. You will have to read or recite 
something, as a reason for your being asked, donT you know.^^ 

“ 1 willnot recoil, even from that test. I have distinguished 
myself occasionally at a Penny Heading. Am I to be tragic 
■ — or comic 

“ Be both if you can. We like to laugh; but we revel in 
something that makes lis 'cry -desperately. If you could give 
us something creepy into the bargain, freeze our blood with a 
ghost or two, it would be all the more enjoyable. 

“ I Will satiate you with my talents; I shall feel like Pen- 
theus when he intruded upon his mother and her crew, and 
shall be humbly grateful for not being torn to pieces. I dare 
say I shall be torn to pieces morally, in the way of criticism- 
Good-night, and a thousand thanks.’’^ 

“ Wait,^^ said Miss Newton. ‘‘ I^m afraid it is much foggier 
than when you came. I have smelled the fog coming on while 
we have been talking. WouldnT you like a cab?^’ 

“ I should, very much, but I doubt if I shall succeed in 
finding one.^^ 

“ You wouldn’t, but I dare say I can get you one,” replied,^ 
Miss Newton, decisively. 

She had an unobtrusive little chatelaine at her side, and 
from the bunch of implements, scissors, penknife, thimble, 
she selected a small whistle. Then she pulled back one of the 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


187 


cream- white curtains, opened the window, and whistled loud 
and shrill into the fog. Two minutes afterward there came a 
small treble voice out of the darkness. 

“ What is it. Miss Newton?^^ 

Who’s that?” 

Tommy Meadows. ” 

“ All right. Tommy. Do you think you could find a han- 
som without getting yourself run over?” 

“ Rather! Do you want^it bringed to your door, miss?” 

“ If you please. Tommy.” 

“ I’m off,” cried the shrill voice, and in less than ten min- 
utes a two- wheeler rattled along the street, and drew up sharp- 
ly at Tommy’s treble command, with Tommy himself seated 
inside, enjoying the drive- and the uncertainty of the driver. 

His spirits were still further exalted by the gift of sixpence 
from Theodore as he stepped into the cab, to be taken cauti- 
ously back to the Temple. 

Even that sitting-room of his, which he had taken some 
pains to make comfortable and home-like, had a gloomy look 
after that bright room in Lambeth, with its terra-cotta walls 
and cream-colored curtains, its gayly bound books and vivid 
Vallauris vases perched in every available corner. He was 
more interested in that quaint interior, and in the woman who 
had created it, than he had been in any one except that one 
woman who filled the chief placd in all his thoughts. The 
vicar of Kettisford had not overestimated Sarah Newton’s 
power of fascination. 

He was in Wedge wood Street at a few minutes before eight 
on the following evening. The sky above Lambeth was no 
longer obscured; there were wintery stars shining over that 
forest of chimney-pots and everlasting monotony of slated 
roofs; and even Latimer Road looked lively, with its costers’ 
barrows . and bustle of eventide marketing.- Theodore found 
the door open, as it had been yesterday, and he found an ex- 
tra lamp upon the first-floor landing, and the door of Miss 
Newton’s room ajar, while from within came the sound of 
many voices, moderated to a subdued tone, but still lively. 

His modest knock was answered by Miss Newton herself, 
who was standing close to the door, ready to greet every fresh 
arrival. 

‘‘ How do you do? We are nearly all here,” she said, 
cheerily. “ I hope, you have not just been dining, for with us 
tea means a hearty meal, and if you can’t eat anything we 
shall feel as if you were Banquo’s ghost. How do you do, Mrs. 
Kinby?” to another arrival. “ Baby better, 1 hope? Yes, 


188 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


that^s right. How are you, Clara? and you, Eose? You^ve 
had that wretched tooth out — I can see it in your face. Such 
a relief, isn^t it? So glad to see you, Mrs. Dale, and you, 
Maria, and you, Jenny. Why, we are all here, I do believe.'’^ 

‘‘ Yes, Miss Newton, said a bright-looking girl by the fire- 
place, who had been making toast indefatigably for twenty 
minutes, and whose complexion had suffered accordingly. 
“ There are two-and-twenty of us, three-and -twenty, counting 
the gentleman and you. I think that’s as many as you ex- 
pected.” 

“ Yes, everybody’s here. So we may as well begin tea.” 

In most such assemblies, where the intention was to benefit 
an humble class of guests, the proceedings would have begun 
with a hymn; but at Miss Newton’s parties there were neither 
hymns nor prayers — and yet Miss Newton loved her hymm 
book, and delighted in the pathos and the sweetness of the 
music with which those noble words are interwoven; nor would 
she yield to anybody in her belief in the efficacy of prayer; 
but she had made up her mind from the beginning that her 
tea-parties were to be pure and simple recreation, and that 
any good which should come out of them was to come inci- 
dentally. The women and girls who came at her bidding were 
to feel they came to be entertained, came as her guests, just as, 
had they been duchesses, they might have gone to visit other 
duchesses in Park Lane or Carlton Gardens. They were not 
asked in order that they should be taught or preached to or 
wheedled into the praying of prayers or the singing of hymns. 
They went as equals to. visit' a friend who relished their society. 
And did not everybody relish the tea, which might be described 
as a Yorkshire tea of an humble order, not the Yorkshire tea 
which may mean mayonnaise and perigord pie, chicken and 
champagne — but tea as understood in the potteries of Hull, 
or the humbler alleys and streets of Leeds or Bradford. Three 
moderate-sized tables had been put together to make one ca- 
pacious board, spread with snowy damask, upon which appear- 
ed two large plum loaves, two tall towers of bread and butter, 
a glass bowl of marmalade, a bowl of jam, two dishes of thin- 
ly sliced German sausage set off with sprigs of parsley — Ger- 
man sausage bought at the most respectable ham-and-beef 
shop in the borough, and as trustworthy as German sausage 
can be; and, for crowning glory of the feast, a plentiful supply 
of shrimps, freshly boiled, savoring of the unseen sea. The 
hot buttered toast was frizzling on a brass footman in front 
of the fire, ready to be handed round piping hot, as required. 
There were two tea-trays, one at each end of the table, and 


THE HAY WILL COME. 189 

there were two bright copper kettles, which had never been 
defiled by the smoke of the fire, filled with admirable tea. 

Miss Newton took her place at the head of the table, with 
Theodore on her right hand, and a pale and fragile-looking 
young woman on her left. These two assisted the hostess in 
the administration of the tea-tray, handing cups and saucers, 
sugar basin and cream jug; and in so doing they had frequent 
occasion to look at each other. 

Having gone there prepared to be interested, Theodore soon 
began to interest himself in this young woman, whom Miss 
Newton addressed as Marian. She was by no means beautiful 
now, but Theodore fancied that she had once been very hand- 
some, and he occupied himself in reconstructing the beauty of 
the past from the wreck of the present. 

The lines of the face were classic in their regularity, but the 
hollow cheeks and pallid complexion told of care and toil, and 
the face was aged untimely by a hard and joyless life. The 
eyes were darkest gray, large and pathetic-looking, the eyes of 
a woman who had suffered much and thought much. The 
beauty of those eyes gave a mournful charm to the pale, 
pinched face, and the light auburn hair was still luxuriant. 
Theodore noted the delicate hands and taper fingers, which 
differed curiously from the other hands which were busy around 
the hospitable board. 

He could see that this youngs woman was a favorite with 
Sarah Newton, and he told himself that she was of a race 
apart from the rest; but he was agreeably surprised in finding 
that, except for the prevailing cockney accent and a few slight 
lapses in grammar and pronunciation. Miss Newton^s guests 
were quite as refined as those ladies of Dorchester with whom 
it had been his privilege to associate; indeed, he was not' sure 
that he did not prefer the cockney twang and the faulty gram- 
mar to the second-hand smartness and slang of the young 
ladies whose “ Awfully jolly, “ AhiT' itP^ and “ DonT you 
know?'’^ had so often irritated his ear on tennis lawn or at 
afternoon tea-party. Here at least there was the unstudied 
speech of people who knew not the caprices of fashion or the 
latest catch word that had descended from Belgravia to 
Brompton, and from Brompton tq,the provinces. 

There was a great deal of talk, as Miss Newton had told 
him there would be; and as she encouraged all her guests to 
talk about themselves, he gathered a good deal of interesting 
information about the state of the different trades and the 
ways and manners of various employers, most of whom seemed 
to be of a despotic and grasping temper. The widows talked 


190 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


of their children's ailments or their progress at the Board 
School; the girls talked a little, and with all modesty, of their 
sweethearts. Sarah Newton was interested in every detail of 
those humble lives, and seemed to remember every fact bear- 
ing upon the joys or the sorrows of her guests. It was a won- 
der to Theodore to see how the careworn faces lighted up round 
the cheeerf ul table in the bright lamp-light. Yes, it was sure- 
ly to do much to live among these daughters of toil, and to 
lighten their burdens by this quick sympathy, this cheerful 
hospitality. Vast pleasure halls and People^s Palaces may dc 
much for the million; but here was one little spinster with he/ 
small income making an atmosphere of friendliness and com- 
fort for the few, and able to get a great deal nearer to them 
than philanthropy on a gigantic scale can ever get to the 
many. 

Theodore noticed that, while most other tongues babbled 
freely, the girl called Marian sat silent, after her task of dis- 
tributing the tea was over, with hands folded in her lap, lis- 
tening to the voices round her, and with a soft, slow smile 
lighting her face now and then. In repose her countenance 
was deeply sad, and he found himself speculating upon the 
history that had left those melancholy lines upon a face that 
was still young. 

“ I am much interested in your next neighbor, he said k) 
Miss Newton, presently, while Marian was helping another 
girl to clear the table. “ I feel sure there must be something 
very sad in her experience ,of life, and that she has sunk from 
a higher level. 

“ So do I,^^ answered Miss Newton; but I know very little 
more about her than you do, except that she is a most exquisite 
worker with those taper fingers of hers, and that she has 
worked for the same baby-linen house for the last three years, 
and lived in the same second-floor back in Hercules’s Build- 
ings. I think she is as fond of me as she can be, yet she has 
never told me where she was born, or who her people were, or 
what her life has been like. Once she went so far as to tell 
me that it had been a very commonplace life, and that her 
troubles had been in no wise extraordinary — except the fact of 
her having had a very severe attack of typhus fever, which 
left her a wreck. Once from some chance allusion I learned 
that it was in Italy she caught the fever, and that it was bad- 
ly treated by a foreign doctor; but that one fact is all she 
ever let slip unawares in her talk, so carefully does she avoid 
every allusion to the past. I need hardly tell you that I have 
never questioned her. I have reason to know that her life for 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


191 


the last three years has been spotless, an industrious, temper- 
ate, Christian life, and that she is charitable and kind, with- 
out stint, to those who are poorer than herself. That is quite 
enough for me, and I have encouraged her to make a friend 
of me in every way in my power. 

“ She is happy in having found such a friend, an invaluable 
friend to a woman who has sunk from higher social surround- 
ings. 

Yes, I think I have been a comfert to her. She comes to 
me for books, and we meet nearly every day at the Free 
Library, and compare notes about our reading. My only re- 
gret is that 1 can not induce her to take enough air and exer- 
cise. She spends all the time that she can spare from her 
needle- work in reading. But 1 take her for a walk now and 
then, and 1 think she enjoys that. A penn^’orth of the tram-car 
carries us to Battersea Park, and 'we can stroll about among 
grass and trees, and in sight of the river. She is better ofi 
than most of the girls, in the way of getting a little rest after 
toil, for that fine, delicate needlework of hers pays better than 
the common run of work, and she is the quickest worker I 
know.^’ ‘ 

The tables were cleared by this time, and space had been 
made for that half cjrcle round the fire of which Miss Newton 
had spoken on the previous nighty The younger girls brought 
hassocks and cushions, and seated themselves in the front 
rank, while their elders sat in the outer row of chairs. 

Theodore was now called upon to contribute his share to the 
entertainment, and thereupon took a book from his pocket. 

“You told me you and your friends were fond of creepy 
stories. Miss Newton,^^ he said. “ Is that really so?^^ . 

“ Really and truly. . 

“ And you are none of you afflicted with weak nerves — ^you 
are not ^af raid of being mkde uncomfortable by the memory of 
a ghastly story 

“No. I think that with most of us the cares of life are too 
real and too absorbing to leave any room in our minds for im- 
aginary horrors. IsnT it so, now, friends.^’^ 

“ Lor% yes. Miss Newton, answered one of the girls, 
briskly; “ weYe all of us too busy to worry about ghosts; but 
I love a ghost tale for all that. 

A chorus of voices echoed this assertion. 

“Then, ladies, 1 shall have the honor of reading, ^ The 
Haunters and the Haunted,' by Bulwer Lytton." 

The very title of the story thrilled theni, and the, whole 
party, just now so noisy with eager talk and frequent laughter. 


19 ^ 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


sat breathless, looking at the reader with awe-stricken eyes, as 
that wonderful story slowly unwound itself. 

Theodore read well, in that subdued and semi-dramatic 
style which is best adapted to chamber-reading. He felt what 
he read, and the horror of the imaginary scene was vividly be- 
fore his eyes as he read. 

The reading lasted nearly two hours, but it was not one mo- 
ment too long for Theodore ^s audience, and there was a sigh 
of regret when the last words of the story had been spoken. 

“ Well,^^ exclaimed one young lady, “ I do call that a first- 
class tale, don’t you. Miss ^Newton?” 

‘‘You may go a long way without getting such a ghost tale 
as that,” said another; “ and don’t the gentleman read beau- 
tifully, and don’t he make one feel as if it was all going on in 
this very room; and the dog, too? There, I never see such a 
thing! A poor dog to drop down dead, like that!” 

“ 1 did hope that there dog would come to at the end,” said 
one damsel. 

By way of diversion after the story Miss Newton opened 
her piano, beckoned three of the girls over to her, and played 
the symphony of “ Blow, Gentle Gales,” which old-fashioned 
glee the three girls sung with taste and discretion, the bass 
part being altered to suit a female voice. Then came some 
songs, all of which Miss Newton accompanied; and then at 
her request Theodore read again, this time selecting Holmes’s 
“Wonderful One-Hoss. Shay,” which caused much laughter; 
after which, the little clock on the chimney-piece having struck 
eleven, he wished his hostess good-night, selected his coat and 
hat from among the heap of jackets and hats on a table on the 
landing, and went down-stairs. 

He was still in Wedge wood Street when he heard light foot- 
steps 'coming quickly behind him. It seemed to him that they 
were trying to overtake him, so he turned and met the owner 
of the feet. 

“ I beg your pardon, sir; forgive me for following you,” 
said a very gentle voice, which he recognized as belonging to 
the girl called Marian, “ I wanted so much to speak to you— 
alone.” 

“ And I am glad of the opportunity of speaking to you,” he 
answered. “ 1 felt particularly interested in you this evening 
— there are some faces, you know, which interest us in spite of 
ourselves almost, and I felt that I should like to know more 
of you.” 

This was so gravely said that there was no possibility of an 
ofiensive construction being given to the words. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


l;-3 

“You are very good, sir. It was your name tliat struc k 
me/^ she answered, falteringly; “ it is a Dorsetshire nanu^, I 
think. 

“ Yes, it is a Dorsetshire name, and I am a Dorchester 
man. 

“ Dorchester, she repeated, slowly. “ 1 wonder whether 
you know a place called Oheriton?^^ 

“ I know it very well, indeed. A kinsman of mine lives 
there. Lord Cheriton is my cousin.^’ 

“ I thought as much, directly I heard your name. You 
must know all about that dreadful murder, then — last sum- 
mer 

“ Yes, I know as much about it as any one knows, and 
that is very little. 

“They have not found the murderer?’^ she asked, with a 
faint shudder. 

“ No, nor are they ever likely to find him, I believe. But 
tell me why you are interested in Cheriton. Do you come 
from that part of the country?^’’ 

“Yes.^^ 

“ Were you born in Cheriton village?^^ 

“ I was brought up not far from there,^^ she answered, 
hesitatingly. 

He remembered what Miss Newtpn had told him of her own 
forbearance in asking questions, and he pursued the inquiry 
no further. 

“ May I see you as far as your lodgings?^^ he said, kindly. 
“ It will be very little out of my way.'’^ 

“ No, thank you, Mr. Dalbrook. 1 am too much accus- 
tomed to going about alone ever to want any escort. Good- 
night, and thank you for having answered my questions so 
kindly. 

Hq. held out his hand, and she eould not refuse to shake 
hands with him, but her manner showed a disinclination to 
prolong the interview, and she walked away with hurried steps 
which carried her swiftly into the darkness. 

“ Poor, lonely soul!^^ he said to himself. “Now, whose 
lost sheep is she, I wonder? She is certainly of a rank above 
a cottager^s daughter, and, with those hands of hers, it is clear 
that she has never been in domestic service. Not far from 
Cheriton? What may that mean? Not far is a vague descrip- 
tion of locality. I must ask Lady Cheriton about her the 
next time 1 am at the chase. 

7 


194 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


CHAPTER XVL 

** A mind not to be changed by place or time.’* 

Christmas at Dorchester was not a period of festivity to 
which Theodore Dalbrook had hitherto looked forward with 
ardent expectations, but in this particular December he found 
himself longing for that holiday season even as a school-boy 
might long for release from Latin grammar and suet pudding, 
ancl the plenteous fare and idle days of home. He longed for 
the grave old town, with its Roman relics and leafless avenues; 
longed for it, alas! not so much because his father, brother, 
and sisters dwelt there, as because it was within a reasonable 
drive of Carmichael Priory, and, once being at Dorchester, he 
had a fair excuse for going to see his cousin. Many and many 
a time in his chambers at the Temple he had felt the fever 
fit so strongly upon him that he was tempted to put on his 
hat, rush out of those quiet courts and stony quadrangles to 
the bustle of the Embankment, spring into the first hansom 
that came within hail, and so to Waterloo, and by any train 
that would carry him to Wareham Station, and thence to the 
Priory, only to look upon J uanita^s face for a little while, 
only to hold her hand in his, once at greeting and once at 
parting, and then back into the night and the loneliness of his 
life, and law books and precedents, and Justinian and Chitty, 
and all that is commonplace and dry as dust in a many’s ex- 
istence. 

He had refrained from such foolishness, and now Christmas 
was at hand, his sisters were making the house odious with 
holly and laurel, the old cook was chipping suet for the tra- 
ditional pudding which he had loathed for the last ten years, 
and he had a fair excuse for driving along the slimy roads to 
visit' his widowed cousin. He had a pressing invitation from 
Lord Cheriton to spend two or three days of his holiday time 
at the chase, an invitation which he had promptly accepted; 
but his first visit was to Lady Carmichael. 

He found the house, in all things, unlike what it had been 
when last he saw it. The dear Grenvilles had been persuaded 
to spend their Christmas in Dorsetshire, and the Priory was 
full of children's voices and the traces of children's occupa- 
tion. Theodore had known Jessica Grenville before her mar- 
riage, yet it was not the less a shock to find himself confronted 
by a portly matron and a brood of children in that room where 
he had seen Juanita^s sad face bent over her embroidery. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


195 


There was no trace of Juanita in the spacious drawing-room 
to-day, and the fact of her absence almost unhinged him for 
the moment, and made him considerably confused in his con- 
versation with Mrs. Grenville, who received him with gracious 
loquacity, and insisted upon his giving an immediate opinion 
upon the different degrees of family likeness to be seen in her 
four children. 

“Those two are decided Carmichaels,'^ she said, putting 
forward a rather flabby boy and a pudding-faced girl, ‘^and 
the other two are thorough Grenvilles,'’^ indicating the latter 
and younger pair, who were seated on the floor, building a 
Tower of Babel with a lately received present of bricks, and 
carrying out the idea by their own confusion of tongues. 

Theodore felt glad he was not a Grenville, if that was the 
type. He murmured some vague civility about the children, 
while he shook hands with Lady Jane, who had come forward, 
shyly, to welcome him, almost obliterated by her more 
loquacious daughter. 

“ Don^t you think Johnnie the very image of his poor, dear 
uncle asked Mrs. Grenville, urgently, a question which 
always agonized Lady Jane, who could not see the faintest 
likeness between her flabby and bilious-looking grandchild and 
her handsome son. 

Theodore was too nervous to be conscious of his own un- 
truthfulness in replying in the affirmative. He was anxious 
to have done with the children and to hear about his cousin. 

“ I hope Juanita is not ill?’’ he said. 

“ Oh, no, she is pretty well,” replied Lady Jane, “ but we 
keep her as quiet as we can, and of course the children are 
rather trying for her — ” 

“ Nobody can say that they are noisy children,” interjected 
the happy mother. 

“So, she seldom leaves her ow.p rooms till the evening,” 
continued Lady Jane. “ You would like to see her at once, I 
dare say, Mr. Dalbrook? And 1 know she will be pleased to 
see you. ” 

She rang, and told the footman to inquire if Lady Car- 
michael was ready to see Mr. Dalbrook, and Theodore had to 
occupy the interval until the footman’s return with polite at- 
tentions to the four children. He asked Lucy whence she had 
obtained those delightful bricks, thereby eliciting the informa- 
tion that the bricks were not Lucy’s, but Godolphin ’s, only he 
“ let her play with them,” as he observed, magnanimously. 
He was gratified with the further information that the tower 
now in process of elevation was not a church, but the Tower 


196 


THE DAY WILJ. COME. 


of Babel; and he was then treated to the history of that re- 
markable building as related in Holy Writ. 

“ You didn^t know that, did you?’' remarked Godolphin^ 
grandly, when he had finished his narration in a harsh bawl, 
being one of those coarsely constituted brats whom their par- 
ents boast of as after the pattern of the infant Hercules. 

The footman returned before Godolphin had wrung a con- 
fession of ignorance from the nervous visitor, and Theodore 
darted up to follow him out of the room. 

He found Juanita reclining on a low couch near the fire in 
a dimly lighted room, that room which he remembered having 
entered only once before, on the occasion of an afternoon party 
at the Priory, when Sir Godfrey had taken him to his den to 
show him a newly acquired folio copy of Thomson’s “ Sea- 
sons,” with the famous Bartolozzi mezzotints. It was a good 
old room, especially at this wintery season when the dullness of 
the outlook made less difierence. The fire-light gleamed 
cheerily on the rich bindings of the books and on the dark 
wood-work, and fondly touched that reclining figure dressed 
in a loose white cashmere gown, the rich folds of an Oriental 
coverlet draped around her recumbent form. 

“ How good of you to come to see me so soon, Theodore!” 
she said, giving him her hand. “ I know you only came to 
Dorchester yesterday. The girls were here the day before, 
and told me they expected you.” 

“ You did not think I should be in the country very long 
without finding my way here, did you, Juanita?” 

“ Well, no, perhaps not. 1 know vfhat a true friend you 
are to me, all that my husband might have been, if God had 
let him live. And now tell me, have you made any further 
discoveries?” 

“ One more discovery, Juanita, as I told you briefiy in my 
last letter. 1 have traced the squire’s daughter to the sad 
close of a most unhappy life, and so ends the Strangway fam- 
ily as you know of their existence — that is to say, those three 
Strangways who had some right to feel themselves aggrieved 
by the loss of the land upon which they were born. ” 

“ Tell me all you heard from Miss Newton. Your letter 
was brief and vague, but, as I knew I was to see you at Christ- 
mas, 1 waited for fuller details. Tell me everything, Theo- 
dore.” 

He obeyed her, and related the bitter, commonplace story of 
Evniyn Strang way’s life, as told him by her old governess. 
There were no elements of romance in the story. It was as 
common as the Divorce Court or the daily papers. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


197 


Poor creature! Well, there ends my theory, at least 
about her,^^ said Juanita, gloomily. “Her brothers were 
dead, and she was dead, long before that fatal night. Did 
they bequeath their vengeance to any one else, 1 wonder? 
Who else is there in this world who had reason to hate my 
father or me? And I know that no creature upon this earth 
could have cause to hate my husband. 

“ In your father’s calling there is always a possibility 6f a 
deadly hate, ine:gplicable, uu known to the subject. Eemem- 
ber the fate of Lord Mayo. A judge who holds the key^ of 
life and death must make many enemies.” 

“ Yes,” she sighed, “ there is that to be thought of. Oh, 
my dearest and best, why did you ever link your life with that 
of a judge’s daughter? I feel as if 'I had lured him to his 
doom. 1 might have foreseen the danger. I ought never to 
have married. What right had I? Some discharged felon lay 
in wait for him — some relentless, godless, hopeless wretch — 
whom my father had condemned to long imprisonment — 
whose angry heart my father had scorched ^with his scathing 
speech. I have read some cf his summings up, and they have 
seemed cruel, cruel, cruel — so cold, so deliberate, so like a god 
making light of the sins of men. Some wretch, coming mad- 
dened out of his silent cell, and seeing my husband — that 
white, pure life, that brave, strong youth — prosperous, hon- 
ored, happy — seeing what a good man’s life can be— lay in 
wait, like a tiger, to destroy that happy life. If it was not 
one of the Strang ways who kiUed him, it must have been such 
a man.” 

Her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed with a feverish red. 
Theodore took her hand, held it in both his own, and bent to 
kiss the cold fingers— not with a lover’s ardor, fondly as he 
loved; but with a calm and brotherly affection which soothed 
her agitated heart. He loved her well enough to be able to 


himself for her sake. 



“My dear Juanita, if you would only withdraw your thoughts 
from this ghastly subject! I will not ask you to forget. That 
may be impossible! I entreat you only to be patient, to leave 
the chastisement of crime to Providence, which works in the 
dark, works silently, inevitably, to the end for which we can 
only grope in a lame and helpless fashion. Be sure the mur- 
derer will stand revealed, sooner or later. That cfuel murder 
will not be his last crime, and in his next act of violence he 
may be less fortunate in escaping every human eye. Or, if 
that act is to be the one solitary crime of Ifis life, something 
will happen to betray him— some oversight of his own, or 


198 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


some irrepressible movement of a guilty conscience will give 
his life to the net, as a bird flies into a trap. 1 beseech you, 
dear, let your thoughts dwell upon less painful subjects— for 
your own sake — for the sake — 

He faltered and left his sentence unflnished, and Juanita 
knew that his sisters had told him something. She knew that 
the one hope of her blighted life, hope which she had hardly 
recognized as hope yet awhile, was known to him. 

“1 can never cease to think of that night, or to pray that 
God will avenge that crime, she said, firmly. You think 
that is an unchristian prayer, perhaps, but what does the 
Scripture say.^ ‘ Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall 
his blood be shed.' Christ came to confirm that righteous 
law. Oh, it is well to be a humanitarian — to sign petitions 
against capital punishment — but let your dearest and nearest 
be murdered, and you will be quick to recognize the justice of 
that old, inexorable law — a life for a life. That is what I 
want, Theodore— the life of the man who killed my husband." 

“ If I can help to bring about that end, Juanita, believe me 
that I will not shrink from the task; but at present 1 must 
own that I am off the track, and see no likelihood of succeed- 
ing whe.e a trained detective has failed. Could 1 but find a 
shred of evidence to put me on the trail, I would pursue that 
clew to the bitter end. But so far all is dark. 

“ Yes, all is dark," she answered, dejectedly; and then, 
after a pause, she said: “ You are going to stay at Cheriton, 
I hear?" • ' • - 

“lam to spend three days there at the turn of the year, 
just before 1 go.back to London. I have chambers in Ferret 
Court, exactly over the rooms in which your father spent the 
golden years of his youth, the years that made him a great 
man. It will be very interesting to me to hear him talk over 
those years, if I can beguile him into talking of himself, a sub- 
ject which he so seldom dwells upon." 

“ x\sk him if he ever made a bitter enemy. Ask him for 
his experience as a judge at Assizes— find out, if yoif can, 
whether he ever provoked the hatred of an unscrupulous/ vin- 
dictive man. " 

“My dear Juanita, half the criminals who are sentenced 
would come under that denomination; but, fortunately, they 
have not yet taken to wreaking their wrath upon the judges 
who sentenced them when they come out of prison. * Lord 
Mayo's was altogether an exceptional case. The murderer 
was a madman. " 

“ My husband's murderer may have been a madman. It is 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


199 


useless arguing against every theory. There must have been 
a motive for such a seemingly purposeless murder, and that 
motive must have been a diabolical hatred — such hatred as 
one reads of in Ireland and in Corsica; the hate that kills for 
the sake of killing, and will kill an innocent third party to in- 
jure the object of its malignity.” 

“ 1 will question your father, Juanita.” 

“Do! He will not let me talk to him about the one sub- 
ject that occupies my mind. He always stops me on the 
threshold of any inquiries. He might, surely, help me to find 
the murderer, with his highly trained intellect, with his experi- 
ence of the darkest side of human nature. But he will not 
help me. He would talk more freely to you, no doubt.” 

“ I will sound him,” answered Theodore, and then he tried 
to beguile her into talking of other things, her home, her sur- 
roundings. 

“ It must be a comfort to you to have Lady Jane.^^ 

“ A comfort! She is all that I have of happiness — all that 
reminds me of Godfrey. My mother and father are very dear 
to me — I hope you believe that, Theodore? — but our lives are 
parted now. My mother is wrapped up in her husband. 
Neither of them can sympathize with me as his mother can. 
Their loss is not the same as ours. We two are one in our 
grief.” 

And she is a buffer between you and the outer world, I 
see. She bears the burdens that would' weigh you down. 
Those children, for instance — no doubt they are charming, as 
children go; but I fancy they would worty you if you had too 
much of them.” 

“ They would kill me,” said Juanita, smiling at him for the 
first time since his entrance, “ I am afraid; I am not very 
fond of children. It sounds unwomanly to say so, but I often 
find myself wishing they could be born grown up. Fortunate- 
ly, Lady Jane adores them. And I ain glad to have the Gren- 
villes here at Christmas-time. I want all things to be as they 
would have been were my dearest here. I lie here and look 
round this room, which was his, and think and think and think 
of him till I almost fancy he is here. Idle fancy! Mocking 
dream! Oh! if you knew how often I dream that he is living 
still, and I his happy wife! I dream that he has been dead — 
or, at least, that we have all believed that he was dead — but 
that it was a mistake. He is alive, our own for long years to 
come. The wild rapture of that dream wakes me, and I 
know I am alone. God keep you, Theodore,Trom such a loss 
as mine."” 


200 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


I must gain something before I can lose it/^ he answered, 
with a shade of bitterness. “ 1 see myself, as the years go on, 
hardening into a lonely old bachelor, outliving the capacity for 
human affection.'^’ 

“ That is nonsense talk. You think so just now, perhaps. 
There is no one beyond your own family you care for, and you 
fancy yourself shut out from the romance of life — but your 
day will come, very suddenly, perhaps. You will see some 
one whom you can care for. Love will enter your life un- 
awares and will fill your heart and mind, and the ambition that 
absorbs you now will seem a small thing. 

“ Never, Juanita. I donT mean to plague you with any 
trouble of mine. You have given me your friendship, and 1 
hope to be worthy of it, but pray do not talk to me of the 
chances of the future. My future is bounded by the hope of 
getting on at the Bar. If I fail in that, I fail in everything."’^ 

“ You will not fail. There is no reason you should not 
prosper in your profession as my father prospered. I often 
think that you are like him — more like him than you are like 
your own father. 

Their talk touched on various subjects after this — on the 
great events of the world, the events that make history — on 
books and theaters, and then upon Sarah Newton, whose plan 
of life interested Juanita. 

He told her of the woman called , Marian, and her inquiries 
about Oheriton. 

‘‘ I wonder if you ever knew her among 5 ^our villagers,” he 
said. ‘‘ I should much like to 'know who she is.’ She interests 
me more than J can say. There is a refinement in her man- 
ners and appearance that convinces me she must have be- 
longed to superior people. She w^as never born in a laborer’s 
cottage or amid a small shop-keeper^’s shabby surroundings. 
She was never taught at a national school or broken into 
domestic service.” 

“ And she was once very handsome, you say?” 

“ Yes, she must have been beautiful before illness and 
trouble set their marks upon her face. She is only a wreck 
now, but there is a beauty in the wreck. 

How old do you suppose her to be?” 

“Eight- or nine - and - twenty. It is difficult to guess a 
woman’s age within two or three years, and this woman’s face 
is evidently aged by trouble; but I don’t think she can be 
over thirty.” 

“ There is only one person I can think of who would in any 
manner answer your description,” said Juanita, thoughtfully. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


201 


“ Who is that?'^ 

“ Mercy Porter. You must have heard about Mercy Por- 
ter, the daughter of the woman at the east lodge. 

“ Yes, yes, I remember. She ran away with a middle-aged 
man — an army man — one of your father^s visitors. 

“ I was a child at the time, and of course I heard very little 
about it. I only knew that Mercy Porter, who used to come 
to tea with my mother, and who played the piano better than 
my governess, suddenly vanished out of our lives, and that I 
never saw her again. My mother was quite fond of her, and 
I remember hearing of her beauty, though 1 was too young 
myself to know what beauty meant. I could not think any 
one pretty who wore such plain frocks and such stout, useful 
boots as Mercy wore. Her mother certainly did nothing to set 
off her good looks or to instill vanity. Years after, my mother 
told me how the girl disappeared one summer evening, and 
how Mrs. Porter came distracted to the house and saw my 
father, and stormed and raved at him in her agony, saying it 
was Ms friend who had blighted her daughter^’s youth — Ms 
work that she had gone to her ruin. He was very patient and 
forbearing with her, my mother said, for he pitied her despair, 
and he felt that he was in some wise to blame for having 
brought such an unprincipled man as Colonel Tremaine to 
Cheriton, a inan who had carried ruin tojnany homes. Mercy 
had been seen to leave Wareham Station with him by the night 
mail. He had a yacht at Weymouth. She wrote to her 
mother from London a fortnight afterward, and Mrs. Porter 
brought the letter to my mother and father one morning, as 
they sat at breakfast. It was a heart-broken letter — the letter 
of a poor, foolish girl who flings away her good name and her 
hope of heaven with her eyes open, and knows the cost of her 
sacrifice, and yet canT help making it. I was engaged to 
Godfrey when I first heard the details of Mercy’s story and of 
that letter, and I felt so' sorry for her, so sorry, in the midst 
of my happy love. What had 1 done to deserve happiness 
more than she, that life should be so bright for me and so 
dark for her. I did not know that my day of agony was to 
come.” 

“ •Did you ever hear how Colonel Tremaine treated her?” 

“Ho; 1 believe my father wrote him a very severe letter, 
and called upon him to repair the wrong he had done; but I 
don’t think he even took so much trouble as to, answer lhat 
letter. He married a rich widow five years afterward, so it is 
only too clear that he must have abandoned that poor, un- 


202 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


Theodore, with his wider knowledge of life, did not think 
the abandonment inevitable. 

“ Poor Mrs. Porter bore her misfortune very quietly after 
that one outburst of despair,’’ pursued Juanita, “and my 
mother, who had not liked her before that time, quite took to 
her afterward, and they have been good friends ever since. 
Scarcely a week passes without mother calling at the lodge. ” 

“ And has nothing been heard of Mercy since her flight?” 

“Nothing.” 

“ I wonder her mother has sat at home quietly, all these 
years, instead of making strenuous efforts to find her lost 
lamb,” said Theodore. 

“ Ah, that is almost exactly what Godfrey said of her. He 
seemed to think her heartless for taking things so quietly. 
She is a curious woman — self-contained and silent. I some- 
times fancy she was more angry than grieved at Mercy’s fate. 
Mother says she turns to ice at the slightest mention of the 
girl’s name. Don’t you think love would show itself differ- 
ently?” 

“ One can never be sure about other people’s sentiments. 
Love has many languages.” 

Their talk drifted to more commonplace subjects. And 
then Theodore rose to take leave. 

“ You must dine at the Priory before your holiday is over, 
Theo,” said his cousin, as they shook hands. .“ Let me see — 
to-morrow will be Christmas-day — will you come the day after, 
and bring the sisters? It is too long a drive for a winter night, 
so you must stay; there is plenty of room.” 

“ Are you sure we shall not bore you?” 

“lam sure you will cheer me. My sister-in-law is very 
good — but Lady Jane is the only person in this house of whom 
1 do not get desperately tired, including myself,” she added, 
with a sigh. “ Please say you will come, and I will order 
your rooms.” 

“ We will come, then. Good-night, Juamra.^’ 

The shadows were falling as he drove away, after refusing 
tea in the drawing-room and a further acquaintance with the 
wonderful children. 

He looked forward to that evening at the Priory with an 
eager expectancy that he knew to be supreme foolishness, and 
when the evening came it brought some measure of disap- 
pointment with it. Juanita was not so well as she had been 
upon Christmas-eve. She was not able to dine down-stairs, 
and the family dinner, at which Johnnie and Lucy were 
allowed to take their places in virtue of Christmas-time, was a 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


^03 


very dull and Philistine business to Theodore. His only pleas- 
ure was in the fact that he sat on Lady Janets right hand, and 
was able to talk with her of Juanita. Even that pleasure was 
alloyed with keenest pain; for Lady Janets talk was of that 
dead love which cast its shadow over Juanita^s youth, or of 
that dim and dawning hope which might brighten the coming 
days — and neither in the Ipve of the past nor in the love of the 
future had Theodore any part. Juanita was on her, sofa by 
the drawing-room fire when he and Mr. Grenville left the din- 
ing-room, after a single glass of claret and a brief review of 
the political situation. Theodore’s sisters were established on 
each side of her. There was no chance for him while they 
were absorbing her attention, and he retired disconsolately to 
the group in the middle of the room, where Mrs. Grenville 
and Lady Jane were seated on a capacious ottoman with the 
four children about them. 

Johnnie and Lucy; who had overeaten themselves, were dis- 
posed to be quiet, the little girl leaning her fair curls and fat, 
shining cheek against her grandmother’s shoulder with an air 
that looked touching, but really indicated repletion, Johnnie 
sprawling on the carpet at his mother’s feet, and wishing he 
had not eaten that mince-pie, telling himself that, on the 
whole, he hated mince-pie, and hoped he should never see 
one again. Godolphin and Mabel, having dined early, were 
full of troublesome exuberance, waiting to be ^‘jumped,” 
which entertainment Theodore , had to provide without inter- 
mission for nearly half an hour, upheaving first one and then 
another toward the ceiling, first a rosy bundle in ruby velvet, 
and then a rosy bundle in white muslin, laughing, screaming, 
enraptured, to be caught in his arms, and set carefully on the 
ground, there to await the next turn. Theodore slaved at this 
recreation until his arms ached, casting a longing glance every 
now and then at the corner by the fire-place, where his sisters 
were treating Juanita to the resulLof their latest heavy read- 
ing. 

At last, to his delight, Lucy recovered from her comatose 
condition, and began to thirst for amusement. 

‘‘ Let’s have magic music,” she said; “ we can all play at 
that, -granny and all. You know you love magic music, 
granny. Who’ll play the piano? Eot mother, she plays so 
badly,” added the darling, with child-like candor. 

‘‘ Sophy shall play for you,” cried Theodore; she’s a 
capital hand at it.” 

He went over to his sister 


204 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


‘‘ Go and play for the children, Sophy, he said; “ IVe 
been doing my duty. Go and do yours. 

Sophy looked agonized, but complied, and he slipped into 
her vacant seat. 

He sat by his cousin ^s side for nearly an hour, while the 
children, mother, and grandmother played their nursery game 
to the sound of dance-music, neatly executed by Sophy’s ac- 
curate fingers. Their talk was of indifferent subjects, and the 
lion’s share was enjoyed by Janet; but to Theodore it was bliss 
enough to be there, by his cousin’s side, within sound of her 
low, melodious voice, within touch of her tapering hand. J ust 
to sit there and watch her face, and drink in the tones of her 
voice was enough. He asked no more from Fate yet awhile. 

He had a long talk with her in her own room next morning 
before he went back to Dorchester, and the talk was of that 
old subject which absorbed her thoughts. 

‘‘ Be sure you find out all you can from my father,” she said, 
at parting. 

Life at Cheriton Chase bore no impress of the tragedy that 
had blighted J uanita’s honey-moon. There were no festivities 
this winter; there was no large house-party. There had been 
a few quiet elderly or middle-aged visitors during the shooting 
season, and there had been some slaughter of those pheasants 
which were wont to sit, ponderous and sleepy as barn-door 
fowls, upon the five-barred gates, and post-and-rail fences of 
the chase. But even those sober guests — old friends of hus- 
band and wife-^had all. departed, and the house was empty of 
all strangers when Theodore arrived there, in time for dinner, 
on New-year’s-eve. Nothing could have suited him better 
than this. He wanted to be tete-a-tete with Lord Cheriton; 
to glean all in the way of counsel or reminiscence that might 
fall from those wise lips. 

“ If there is a man living who can teach me how to get on 
in my profession it is James Dalbrook,” he said to himself, 
thinking of his cousin by that name which he had so often 
heard his father use when talking of old days. 

Lady Cheriton greeted him affectionately, made him sit by 
her in the library, where a seven-leaved Indian screen made a 
cozy corner by the fire-place, during the twenty minutes be- 
fore dinner. She was a handsome woman still, with that 
grand-looking Spanish beauty which does not fade with youth, 
and she was dressed to perfection in lusterless black silk, re- 
lieved by the glitter of jet here and there, and by the soft 
white crape kerchief, worn a la Marie Antoinette. There was 


THi) DAY WILL COME; 


206 


Dot one thread of gray in the rich black hair, piled in massive 
plaits upon the aristocratic-looking head. Theodore contem- 
plated her with an almost worshiping admiration. It was 
Juanita's face he saw in those classic lines. 

“1 want to have a good talk with you, Theo," she said; 
“ there is no one else to whom I can talk so freely, now my 
poor Godfrey is gone. We sit here of an evening, now, you 
see. The drawing-room is only used when there are people in 
the house, and, even then, I feel miserable there. 1 can not 
get his image out of my mind. Cheriton insists that the room 
shall be used, that it shall not be made a. haunted room — and 
no doubt it is best so — but one can not forget such a tragedy 
as that." 

“ 1 hope Juanita will forget some day." 

“ Ah, that is what I try to hope. She is so young, at the 
very beginning of life, and it does seem hard that all those 
hopes for which other women live s'hould be over and done 
with for her. I wish I could believe in the power of time to 
cure her. I wish 1 could believe that she will be able to love 
somebody else as she loved Godfrey. If she does, I dare say it 
will be some new person who has had nothing to do with her 
past life. I had been in and out of love before I met James 
Dalbrook, but the sight of him seemed like the beginning of a 
new life. I felt as if it had been preordained that I was to 
love him, and only him— rthat nothing else had been real. 
Yes, Theodore," with a sigh, “ you may depend if ever she 
should care for anybody, it will be a new person." 

•“ Very lucky for the new person, and rather hard upon any 
one who happens to have loved her all his life." 

“ Is there any one — like that?" 

“ 1 think you know there is. Lady Cheriton." 

“ Yes, yes, my dear boy, I know," she answered, kindly, 
laying her soft hand upon his. " “ I won't pretend not to 
know. I wish, with all my heart, you could make her care 
for you, Theodore, a year or two hence. You would be a good 
and true husband to her, a kind and just-dealing father to 
Godfrey's child — that fatherless child. Oh, Theodore, is it 
not sad to think of the child who will never — not for one brief 
hour — feel the touch of a father's hand, or know the^ blessing 
of a father's love. Such a dead blank, where there should be 
warmth and life and joy. We must wait, Theo. Who can 
dispose of the future? 1 shall be a happy woman if ever you 
can tell me you have won the reward of a life's devotion." 

“ God bless you for your goodness to me, "he faltered, kiss- 


THE DAY WILL COMi). 


206 

ing the soft white hand, so like in form and outline to J uanita^s 
hand, only plumper and more matronly. 

They dined snugly, a cozy trio, in a small room, hung with 
genuine old Cordovan leather and adorned with Moorish crock- 
ery, a room which was called her ladyship^s parlor, and which 
had been one of Lord Cheriton^s birthday gifts to his wife, 
furnished and decorated during her absence at a German bath. 
When Lady Oheriton left them the two men turned their 
chairs toward the fire, lighted their cigars, and settled them- 
selves for an evening’s talk. 

The great lawyer was in one of his pleasantest moods. He 
gave Theodore the benefit of his experience as a stufi-gown, 
and did all that the advice of a wise senior can do toward put- 
ting a tyro on the right track. 

“ You will have to bide your time,” he said, in conclu- 
sion; “ it is a tedious business. You must just sit in your 
chambers and read till your chance comes. Always be there, 
that’s the grand point. Don’t be out when Fortune knocks 
at your door. She will come in a very insignificant shape on 
her earlier visits — with a shabby little two-guinea brief in her . 
hand; but don’t you let that shabby little brief be carried to 
somebody else just because you are out of the way. I suppose 
you are really fond of the law?” 

“Yes, I am very fond of my profession. It is meat and 
drink to me.” 

“ Then you will get on. Any man of moderate abilities is 
bound to succeed in any profession which he loves with a heart- 
whole love; and your abilities are much better than moder- 
ate.” 

There was a little pause in the talk while Lord Oheriton 
threw on a fresh log and lighted a second cigar. 

“ I have been meditating a good deal upon Sir Godfrey’s 
murder,” said Theodore, “ and I am perplexed by the utter 
darkness which surrounds the murderer and his motive. No 
doubt you have some theory upon the subject.” 

“ No, I have no theory. There is really nothing upon which 
to build a theory. Churton, the detective, talked about a ven- 
detta — suggested poacher, tenant, tramp, gypsy, any member 
of the dangerous classes who might happen to consider himself 
aggrieved by poor Godfrey. He even went so far as to make 
a very unpleasant suggestion, and urged that there might be 
a woman at the bottom of the business, speculating upon some 
youthful intrigue of Godfrey’s. Now, from all I know of that 
young man 1 believe his life had been blameless. He was the 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


207 


soul of honor. He would never have dealt cruelly with any 
woman. 

And you. Lord Oheriton?^’ said Theodorej hardly follow- 
ing the latter part of his cousin’s speech in his self-absorption. 

His kinsman started and looked at him indignantly. 

‘‘And you — in your capacity of judge, for instance — have 
you never made a deadly foe?” 

“Well, I suppose the men and women >1 have sentenced 
have hardly loved me; but I doubt if the worst of theni ever 
had any stronger personal feeling about me. They have taken 
me as a part of the machinery of the law — of no more account 
than the iron door of a cell or the beam of the scaffold.” 

“Yet there have been instances of active malignity — the 
assassination of Lord Mayo, for instance.” 

‘ ‘ Oh, the assassin in that case was an Indian, and mad. 

- We live in a different latitude. Besides, it is rather too far- 
fetched an idea to suppose that a man would shoot my son- 
in-law in order to avenge himself upon me.” 

‘ ‘ The shot may have been fired under a misapprehension. 
The figure seated reading in the lamp-light may have been 
mistaken for you. ” 

“ The assassin must have been uncommonly short-sighted 
to make such a mistake. 1 won’t say such a thing would be 
impossible, for experience has taught me that there is' nothing 
in this life too strange to he true; but it is too unlikely a notion 
to dwell upon. Indeed, I think, Theodore, we must dismiss 
this painful business from our minds. If the mystery is ever 
to be cleared up it will be by a fluke; but even that seems to 
me a very remote contingency. Have you not observed that 
if a murderer is not caught within three months of his crime 
he is hardly ever caught at all? I might almost say if he is 
not caught within one month. Once let the scent cool, and 
the chalices are a hundred to one in his favor.” 

“ Yet Juanita has set her heart upon seeing her husband 
avenged. ” 

“ Ah, that is where her Spanish blood shows itself. An 
English woman, pure and simple, would think only of her sor- 
row.' My poor girl hungers for revenge. Providence may 
favor her, perhans, but I doubt it. The best thing that can 
happen to her will be to forget her first husband, fine young 
fellow as he was, and choose a second. It is horrible to think 
that the rest of her life is to be a blank. With her beauty 
and position she may look high. I am obliged to be ambitious 
for my daughter, you see, Theodore, since Heaven has not 
spared me a son.” 


208 


THE DAY WILD COME. 


Theodore saw, only too plainly, that, whatever favor his 
hopes might have from soft-hearted Lady Oheriton, his own 
kinsman, James Dalbrook, would be against him. This mat- 
tered very little to him at present, in the face of his own sense 
of hopeless love. One gleam of hope. from Juanita herself 
would have seemed more to him than all the favor of parents 
or kindred. It was her hand that held his fate; it was she 
alone who could .make his life blessed. 

New-year’s-day was fine but frosty, a sharp, clear day on 
which Oheriton Park looked loveliest, the trees made fairy-like 
by the light rime, the long stretches of turf touched with a 
silv^ery whiteness, the distant copses and boundary of pine- 
trees half hidden in a pale, gray mist. 

Theodore walked across the park with Lady Oheriton to the 
eleven o’clock service in the church, at the end of Oheriton 
village. It was nearly a mile from the great house to the fine 
old fifteenth-century church, but Lady Oheriton always walked 
to church in decent weather, albeit her servants were conveyed 
there, luxuriously in a capacious omnibus specially retained for 
Iheir use. On the way along the silent avenue Theodore told 
her of his meeting with Miss Newton’s protegee and of Juan- 
ita’s idea that the woman called Marian might be no other 
than Mercy Porter. 

“ I certainly remember no other case of a girl about here 
leaving her home under disgraceful circumstances — that is to 
say, any girl of refinement and education,” said Lady Cheri- 
ton. “ There have been cases among the villagers, no doubt; 
but if this girl of yours is 'really a superior person, and really 
comes from Oheriton, I think Juanita is right, and that you 
must have happened to stumble upon Mercy Porter. Her 
mother ought to be told about it, without delay. ” 

“ Will you tell her, or will you put me in the way of doing 
so?” 

“ Would you like to see Mrs. Porter?” 

“Yes. I feel interested in her, chiefly because she may be 
Marian’s mother. I shall have to go to work very carefully, 
so as not to cause her too keen a disappointment in the event 
of Juanita’s guess being wrong.” 

“ I do not know that you will find her very soft-hearted 
where her daughter is concerned,” replied Lady Oheriton, 
thoughtfully. “ I sometimes fear that she has hardened her- 
self against that unhappy girl. The trmibles of her own early 
life may have hardened her, perhaps. It is not easy to bear a 
long series of troubles with patience and gentleness.” 

“Ho you know much of her history?” 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


200 


Only that she lost her husband when she was still a young 
woman, and that she was left to face the world, penniless, 
with her young daughter. If my husband had not happened 
to hear of her circumstances Heaven knows what would have 
become of her. He had been intimate with her husband when 
he was a young man in London, and it seemed to him a duty 
to do what he could for her; so he pensioned off an old gar- 
dener who used to live in that pretty cottage, and he had the. 
cottage thoroughly renovated for Mrs. Porter. She had a lit- 
tle furniture of a rather superior kind warehoused in London, 
and with this she was able to make a snug and pretty home 
for herself, as you will see if you call upon her after the serv- 
ice. You are sure to see her at church.’’' 

Was she 'very fond of her little girl in those days?" 

“ I hardly know. People have different ways of showing 
affection. She was very strict with poor Mercy. She educated 
her at home, and never allowed her to associate with any of 
the village children. She kept the child entirely under her 
own wing, so that the poor little thing had actually no com- 
panion but her mother, a middle-aged woman, saddened by 
trouble. I felt very sorry for the poor child, and I used to 
have her up at the house for an afternoon, now and then, just 
to introduce some variety into her life. When she grew up 
into a beautiful young woman her mother seemed to dislike 
these visits, and stipulated that Mercy should only come to see 
me when there were no visitors in the house. She did not 
want her head turned by any of those foolish compliments 
which frivolous people are so fond of paying to a girl of that 
age, never thinking of the mischief they may do. 1 told her 
that I thought she was overcareful, and that as Mercy must 
discover that she was handsome sooner or later, it was j'ust as 
v/ell she should gain some experience of life at once. Her in- 
stinctive self-respect would teach her how to take care of her- 
self; and if she could be safe ahy where she would be safe with 
me. Mrs. Porter is a rather obstinate person, and she took 
her own way. She kept Mercy as close as if she had been an 
Oriental slave, and yet, somehow. Colonel Tremaine contrived 
to make love to her, and tempted her away from her home. < 
Perhaps if that home had been a little less dismal the girl 
might not have been so easily tempted." 

They had left the park by this time and were nearing the 
church. A scanty congregation came slowly in after Lady 
Cheriton and her companion had taken their seats in the com- 
fortable chancel pew. The congregation was chiefly feminine. 
Middle-aged women in every-day bonnets and fur-trimmed 


210 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


cloaks, with their shoulders up to their ears. Girls in felt hats 
and smart, tight-fitting jackets. A few pious villagers of ad- 
vanced years, spectacled, feeble, with wrinkled faces half hid- 
den under poke-bonnets; two representative old men with long 
white hair, and quavering voices, distinguishable above the’ 
scanty choir. 

Amid this sparse congregation Theodore had no difficulty in 
discovering Mrs. Porter. 

She sat in one of the front benches on the left side of the 
aisle, which side was reserved for the tradespeople and hum- 
bler inhabitants of Cheriton; while the benches on the right 
were occupied by the county people, and some small fry who 
ranked with those elect of the earth — with them, but not of 
them — a retired colonel of artillery and his wife, the village 
doctor, and the village lawyer, and two or three female annui- 
tants of good family. 

A noticeable woman, this Mrs. Porter, anywhere. She was 
tall and thin, straight as a dart, with strongly marked features 
and white hair. Her complexion was pale and sallow, the 
kind of skin which is generally described as sickly. If she 
had ever been handsome, all traces of that former beauty had 
disappeared. It was a hard face, without womanly charm, 
yet with an unmistakable air of refinement. She wore her 
neat little black straw bonnet and black cloth mantle like a 
lady, and she walked like a lady, as Theodore saw presently, 
when that portion of the ^little hand of worshipers which did 
not remain for the Celebration dribbled slowly out of church. 

He left Lady Cheriton kneeling in the pew, and followed 
Mrs. Porter out of the porch and along the village street, and 
thence into that rustic lane which led to the west lodge. He 
had spoken to her only once in his life, on a summer morn- 
ing, when he had happened to find her standing at her garden- 
gate, and when it had been impossible for her to avoid him. 
He knew that she must have seen him going in and out of the 
park-gates often, enough for his appearance to be very familiar 
to her, so he had no scruple in introducing himself. 

‘‘ Good-morning, Mrs. Porter,"^ he said, overtaking her in 
the deeply sunk lane, between those rocky banks where harts- 
tongue and polypodium grew so luxuriantly in summer, and 
where even in this wiutery season the lichens and mosses spread 
their rich coloring over gray stone and brown earth, and above 
which the snow-laden boughs showed white against the cold 
blue brightness of the sky. 

She turned and bowed stiffly. 

‘‘ Good-morning, sir. 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


211 


''You haven^t forgotten me, I hope. I am Theodore Dal- 
brook, of Dorchester. I fancied you must have seen me pass 
your window too often to forget me easily 

“ I am not much given to watching the people who pass in 
and out, sir. When his lordship gave me the cottage he was 
good enough to allow me a servant to open the park-gate, as 
he knew that I was not strong enough to bear exposure to all 
kinds of weather. I am free to live my own life, therefore, 
without thinking of his lordship^s visitors. 

“ I am sorry to intrude myself upon your notice, Mrs. 
Porter, but I want to speak to you upon a very delicate sub- 
ject, and 1 must ask your forgiveness in advance if I should 
touch upon an old wound. 

She looked at him curiously, shrin kingly even, with a latent 
anger in her pale gray eyes, eyes that had been lovely once, 
perhaps, but which time or tears had faded to a glassy dull- 
ness. 

I have no desire to discuss old wounds with any one,^^ she 
said, coldly. “ My troubles at least are my own.'’^ 

Not altogether your own, Mrs. Porter. The sorrow of 
which I am thinking involves another life — the life of one who 
has been dear to you.'’^ 

I have nothing to do with any other life.^^ 

“Not even with the life of your only child 
“ Not even with the life of my only child, she answered, 
doggedly. " She left me of her own accord, and I have done 
with her forever. I stand utterly alone in this world, utterly 
alone,’’’ she repeated. 

“ And if 1 tell you that I think and believe I have found 
your daughter in London — very poor — working for her living, 
very sad and lonely, her beauty faded, her life joyless — would 
you not wish to know more — would not your heart yearn to- 
ward her?” , - . 

“No! I tell yoir.l have done with her. She has passed 
out of my life. I stand alone. ” 

There was a tone of finality in these words which left no 
room for argument. 

Theodore lifted his hat, and walked on. 


212 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


CHAPTER XVIL 

O sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm! 

All records, saving thine, come cool and calm 

And shadowy, through the mist of passed years.’" 

“ All the creatures 

Made for Heaven’s honors have their ends, and good ones, 

All but the cozening crocodiles, false women. ’ ’ 

Harkington Dalbrook, having in a manner given hostages 
to Fortune, entered upon his new career with a strength of 
purpose and a resolute industry which took his father by sur- 
prise. 

“ Upon my word, Harry, I did not think there was so much 
grit in you,'^ said Mr. Dalbrook. “ I thought you and your 
sisters were too much stuffed with modern culture to be capa- 
ble of old-fashioned work.^^ 

“I hope, my dear father, you donT think education and 
intellect out of place in a lawyer?’^ 

“ Far from it. We have had too many examples to the con- 
trary, from Bacon to Brougham, from Hale to Cockbuine; 
but I was afraid of the dilettante spirit, the talk about books 
which you had only half read, the smattering of subjects that 
need the work of a life-time to be properly understood. I was 
afraid of our modern electro-plate culture — the process which 
throws a brilliant film of education over a foundation of igno- 
rance. However, you have surprised me, Harry. I own that 
I was disappointed by your vacillation about the Church; but 
I begin to respect you now I find you attack your work in the 
right spirit. 

‘‘ I want to get on/’ answered Harrington, gravely, hanging 
his head a little in shame at his own reticence. 

From so kind a father he felt it was a kind of dishonor to 
keep a secret; but Juliet Baldwin had insisted upon secrecy, 
and the name of eyevy fiancee in the early stages of an engage- 
ment is She-who-must-be-obeyed. , 

Harrington said not a word, therefore, as to that wondrous 
prime-mover which was urging him to dogged pierseveraiice in 
a profession for which he had as yet no real inclination. He 
put aside Darwin and Spencer, Max Muller and Seeley, 
Schopenhauer and Hartmann, all those lights true or false 
which he had followed through the mazes of free thought, and 
he set himself to master the stern actualities of the law. He 


TtiE BAY WILL COME. 


^13 


had not done well at the university; not because he was want- 
ing in brains, but because he was wanting in concentration 
and doggedness. The prime-mover being supplied, and of a 
prodigious power, Harrington brought his intellectual forces 
to bear upon a given point, and made a rapid advance- in legal 
knowledge and acumen. The old cook housekeeper com- 
plained of the coals and candles which “ Master Harry con- 
sumed during his after-midnight studies, and wondered that 
the household were not all burned in their beds by reason of 
the young gentleman dropping off to sleep over Coke upon 
Littleton. The sisters complained that they had now practi- 
cally no brother, since Harrington, who had a pretty tenor 
voice, and had hitherto been a star at afternoon teas and even- 
ing parties, refused to go anywhere, except to those few houses 
— county — where Miss Baldwin might be met. 

Scarcely had the Hew-year begun when Miss Baldwin went 
off upon a visit' to one of the largest houses in Wiltshire, and 
one of the smartest, a house under the dominion of a childless 
widow, gifted with a large income and a sympathetic tem- 
perament, a lady who allowed her life to be influenced and 
directed by a family of nephews and nieces, and whose house 
was declared by the advanced section of society to be “ quite 
the most perfect house to stay in, don^t you know.'^ 

• Miss Baldwin did not leave the neighborhood of Dorchester 
and her lover without protestations of regret. The thing was 
a bore, a sacrifice on her part, but it must be done. She had 
promised dear old Lady Burdenshaw ages ago, and to Lady 
Burdenshaw’s she must go. 

‘‘You neednT worry about it,'^ she said, with her off-hand 
air, lolling on the billiard-room settee in the gray winter after- 
noon, on the second Sunday of the year; “ if you are at all 
keen upon being at Medlow Court, while I am there, Ifll 
make dear old Lady Burdenshaw send you an invitation.^’ 

“ You are very good, and I should like staying in the same 
house with you, but I couldn’t think of visiting a lady I don’t 
know, or of cadging for an invitation. ” 

Sir Henry had asked his friend to luncheon, and now, after 
a somewhat Spartan meal of roast mutton and rice pudding, 
the lovers were alone in the billiard-room. Sir Henry having 
crept off to the stables. The table was kept rigorously covered 
on Sundays, in deference to the dowager’s Sabbatarian lean- 
ings; and there was nothing for tier son to do in the billiard- 
room, except to walk listlessly up and down and stare at some 
very dingy examples of the early Italian school, or to take the 




THE DAY WILL COME. 


cues out of the rack one by one to see which of them wanted 
topping. 

“ Oh, but you needn^t mind. You would be capital friends 
with Lady B. We all call her Lady B., because a three-sylla- 
ble name is too much for anybody's patience. I tell her she 
ought to drop a syllable. Lady Bur'shaw would do just as 
well. I suppose, though, if 1 were to get an invitation, you 
could hardly be spared from — the shop," concluded Juliet, 
with a laugh. 

“ Yes, 1 have to stick very close to — the shop," replied 
Harrington, blushing a little at the word. “ Eemember what 
I am working for — a family practice in London and a house 
that you need not be ashamed to inhabit. To me that means 
as much as the blue ribbon of the Bath means to a soldier or 
sailor. My ambition goes no further, unless it were to a seat 
ill Parliament later on." 

“ You are a good, earnest soul. Yes, of course, you must 
go into Parliament. In spite of all the riff-raff that has got 
into the House of late years-^boys. Home Rulers, city men, 
there is a faint flavor of distinction in the letters M.P. after 
a man's name. It helps him just a little in society to be able 
to. talk about ‘ my constituents,' and to contemplate European 
politics from the standpoint of the town that has elected him. 
Yes, you must be in the House by and by, Harry." 

“You told me you were tired of country-house visiting," 
said Harrington, who for the first time since his betrothal felt 
somewhat inclined to quarrel with his divinity. 

“ So I am, heartily sick of. it; and I shall rejoice when I 
have a snug little house of my own in Clarges or Hertfoi’d 
Street. But you must admit that Medlow Court is better than 
this house. Behold our average Sunday roast mutton, rice 
pudding, and invincible dullness; all the servants except an 
under-footman gone to afternoon church, and no possibility 
of a cup of tea till nearly six o'clock. A cold dinner at eight, 
and family prayers at ten. " 

“ What kind of Sunday do you have at Medlow?" 

“ II y’en a your tons Us gouts — Medlow is liberty hall. If 
we were even to take it into our heads to have family prayers. 
Lady Burdenshaw would send for her chaplain — pluck him 
out of the bosom of his family — and order him to read them. 
She doesn't like cards on a Sunday, because of the servants; 
but after the clock has struck eleven we may do what we 
please — play poker, nap, euchre, baccarat, till daylight, if we 
are in the humor. The billiard and smoke-rooms and the 
ball-room are at one end of the house, ever so far from the 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


215 


servants’ quarters. We can have what fun we like while those 
rustic souls are snoring. ” 

Harrington sighed ever so faintly. This picture of a fash- 
ionable interior was perfectly innocent, and his betrothed’s 
way of looking at things meant girlish exuberance, fine ani- 
mal spirits; but the sans gene of Medlow Court was hardly 
the kind of training he would have chosen for his future wife. 
And then he looked at the handsome profile, the piled-up mass 
of ruddy-brown hair on the top of the haughtily poised head, 
the perfectly fitting tailor gown, with its aristocratic simplicity, 
costing so much more than plebeian silks and satins; and he 
told himself that he was privileged in having won such exalted 
beauty to ally itself with his humble fortunes. Such a girl 
would shine as a duchess; and if marriageable dukes had eyes 
to see with, and judgment to guide their choice, that lovely 
brown head would ere now have been crowned with a tiara of 
family diamonds, instead of waiting for the poor sprigs of 
orange blossom which alone may adorn the brow of the solic- 
itor’s bride. 

Shall we go for a stroll in the grounds?” asked Juliet, 
with a restless air and an impatient shiver. “ Perhaps it will 
be warmer out-of-doors than it is here. We keep such miser- 
able fires in this house. 1 believe the grates were chosen with 
the view to burning the minimum of coal.” 

“ I shall be delighted.” 

Laura was absent on a visit to Yorkshire cousins, strong- 
minded like herself, and with no pretensions to fashion. Lady 
Baldwin had retired for. her afternoon siesta. On Sundays she 
always read herself to sleep with Taylor or South; on week- 
days she nodded oyer the morning paper. She had gone to 
the morning-room with the idea that Henry would take his 
friend to the stables, and- that Juliet would require no looking 
after. It had never entered intoJier ladyship’s head that her 
handsome daughter would look so low as the son of her family 
solicitor. Juliet was therefore free to do what she pleased 
with her afternoon, and her pleasure was to walk in the chilly 
shrubberies and the bare, gray park, sparsely timbered, and 
with about as little forestial beauty as a gentleman’s park can 
possess. 

She put on an old sealskin jacket and a toque to match, 
which she kept in the room where her brother kept his over- 
coats, and which smelled of tobacco, after the manner oi every- 
thing that came within Sir Henry’s influence. And then she 
led the way to a half -glass door, which opened on a grass-plot 
at the side of the house, and she and her lover went out. 


216 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ You can smoke if you like/^ she said. “ You know 1 
don^t mind. 1^11 have a cigarette with you in the shrub- 
bery.-’^ 

“ Dearest Juliet, I can^t tell you how glad I should be if 
you would smoke — less/^ he said, nervously, blushing at his 
own earnestness. 

“You think I smoke too many cigarettes — that they are 
really bad for me?’^ she asked, carelessly. 

“It isn^’t that. I wasn’t thinking about their effect on 
your health, but — I know you will call it old-fashioned non- 
sense — I can’t bear to see the woman who is to be my wife 
with a cigarette between her lips.” 

‘ ‘ And when I am your wife, I suppose, you will cut me off 
from tobacco altogether. ” 

“ 1 should never be a domestic tyrant, Juliet; but it would 
wound me to see my wife smoke, just as much as it wounds 
me now when 1 see you smoke half a dozen cigarettes in suc- 
cession.” 

“ What a Philistine you are, Harry! Well, you shall not be 
tortured. I’ll ease off the smoking if I can; but a whiff or 
two of an Egyptian soothes me when my nerves are over- 
strained. You are as bad as my mother, who thinks cigarette 
smoking one stage on the road to perdition, and rather an ad- 
vanced stage too. You are very easily shocked, Harry, if an 
innocent little cigarette can so shock you. I wonder if you are 
really fond of me, now the novelty of our engagement has 
worn off?” ' , , 

“ I ana fonder of you every day I live.” 

“ Enthusiastic boy! If that is true, you may be able to 
stand a worse shocker than my poor little cigarette. ” 

Harrington turned pale, but he took t& hand which she 
held out to him, and grasped it firmly. What was she going 
to tell him?” 

“ Harry, I want to make a financial statement. I want 
you to help me if you can. I am up to my eyes in debt. ” 

“In debt?” 

“Yes. It sounds bad, doesn’t it? Debt and tobacco should 
be exclusively masculine vices. I owe money all round — not 
large sums, but the sum-total is large. I have had to hold my 
own in smart houses upon an allowance which some women 
would spend with their shoe-maker alone. My mother gives me 
a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year for everything — tips, 
traveling expenses, clothes, music — and I am not going to say 
anything unkind about her on that score, for I don’t see how 
she could give me more. Her own means come to something 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


21 ? 


under eighteen hundred a year, and she has this place to keep 
up. Henry takes all the rents, and often keeps her waiting 
for her income, which is a first charge upon the estate. If it 
were not for your father, who looks after her interests as 
sharply as he can, she might fare much worse. Henry brings 
as many men as he likes here, and contributes nothing to the 
housekeeping. 

“ And you owe money to milliners and people said Har- 
rington, deeply distressed by his sweetheart’s humiliation, 
which he felt more keenly than the lady herself. 

Juliet had lived among girls who talked freely of their debts 
and difficulties — of sops to Cerberus, and getting round an un- 
willing dress-maker. Harrington’s lines had been set among 
old-fasjiioned countrified people, to whom debt, and especially 
feminine indebtedness, meant disgrace. He had come back 
from the university feeling like a murderer, because he had 
exceeded his allowance. 

“ Milliners, dress-makers, shoe-makers, hatters — and ever so 
many more. I am afraid 1 have been rather reckless — only — 
I thought — ” 

I thought I should make a great match,” she would have 
said, had she followed her idea to its close, but she checked 
herself abruptly, and cut off a sprig of yew with a swing of 
the stick she carried. 

“ If I can help you in any way — ” began Harrington. 

“ My dear boy, there is only one way in which you can help 
me. Lend me any money you can spare, say fifty pounds, and 
I will give it you back by installments of ten or fifteen pounds 
a quarter. It would be mockery for me to pretend I could 
pay you in a lump sum, now I have told you the extent of my 
income.” 

Harrington’s worldly wealth at that moment was something 
under fifty pounds. His father had given him a check for 
fifty on Christmas-eve, and he had ho right to expect anything 
more till Lady-day; while he had to think of the black horse 
who was steadily eating his head off at livery, and for whom 
nothing had been paid as yet. 

He could not find it in his heart to tell his affianced that he 
was, comparatively speaking, a pauper. He knew that his 
father had the reputation of wealth — a man always ready to 
invest in any odd parcel of land that was in the market — and 
who was known to possess a good many small holdings and 
houses in his native town and its neighborhood. Could he tell 
her that her future husband was still in leading-strings, and 
that the run of his teeth and fifty pounds a quarter were all he 


m 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


could count upon till lie was out of his articles? No, he 
would rather perish than reveal these despicable facts; so, 
although he had only forty- three pounds odd in his little cash- 
box, he told her that he would let her have fifty pounds in a 
day or two. 

“ If you could manage to bring it to me to-morrow 1 should 
be very glad,’^ said Juliet, who, once having broken the ice, 
talked about the loan with perfect ease and frankness. ‘‘1 
must have a new frock for the ball at Medio w. They are to 
have a ball on the first of February, the ball of the year. 
There will be no end of smart people. I want to send Estelle 
Dawson thirty-five or forty pounds, about half the amount of 
her last bill. It^s a paltry business altogether. I know girls 
who owe their dress-makers hundreds where I owe tens.. Let 
me have it to-morrow if you can, there’s a dear. Miss Dawson 
is sure to be full of work for the country at this season, and 
she won’t make my frock unless I give her a week’s notice.” 

Of course, dear — yes, you shall have the money,” Harring- 
ton answered, nervously; “but your white gown at our ball 
looked lovely. Why shouldn’t you wear that at Medlow?” 

“ My white gown would be better described as black,” re- 
torted the young lady, with marked acidity. “If I didn’t 
hate the Dorchester people like poison, I wouldn’t have in- 
sulted them by wearing such a rag. I would no more appear 
in it at Medlow than I would cut my throat.” 

Language so strong as this forbade argument. Harrington 
concluded that there was a mystery in these thiugs outside' the 
limits of masculine understanding. Tb his eye the white satin 
and tulle his betrothed had worn had seemed faultless; but it 
may be that the glamour of first love acts like lime-light upon 
a soiled white garment; and no doubt Miss Baldwin’s gown 
had done good service. 

He walked back to the house with her, and left her at the 
door just as it was growing dusk, and the servants were coming, 
home from church. He left her with a fictitious appearance 
of cheerfulness, promising to go to tea on the following after- 
noon. 

He was glad of the three-mile walk to Dorchester, as it gave 
him solitude for deliberation. At home the keen eyes of his 
sisters would be upon him, and he would be pestered by in- 
quiries as to what there had been for lunch, and what Miss 
Baldwin wore; while the still more penetrating gaze of his 
father would be quick to perceive anything amiss. 

“ Oh, Juliet, if you knew how hard you are making our en- 
gagement to me,” he ejaculated, mentally, as he walked, with 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


219 


the unconscious hurry of an agitated mind, along the frost- 
bound road. There had been a hard frost* since Christmas, 
and hunting had been out of the question — whereby the exist- 
ence of Mahmud- and the bill at the livery-stable seemed so 
much the heavier a burden. 

Somehow or other he must get the difference between forty- 
three pounds and fifty — only seven pounds — a paltry sum, no 
doubt; but it would hardly do for him to leave himself penni- 
less until the 25th of March. He might be called on at any 
moment for small sums. Short of shamming illness, and 
stopping in bed till the end of the quarter, he could not possi- 
bly escape the dailyscalls which every young man has upon his 
purse. He told himself, therefore, that he, must contrive to 
borrow fifteen or twenty pounds— but of whom? That was 
the question. ' • 

His first thought was naturally of his brother; but in the 
next moment he remembered how Theodore, in his financial 
arrangements with his father, had insisted^ upon cutting him- 
self down to the very lowest possible allowance. 

“ You will pay all my fees, dad, and give me enough money 
tg furnish my chambers decently, with the help of the things 
I am to have out of this house, and you will allow me so 
much,'’'’ he said, naming a very modest sum, “ for main- 
tenance till I began to get briefs. 1 -want to feel the spur of 
poverty. 1 want to work for my bread. Of course I know I 
have a court of appeal here if my exchequer should run dry.'’'’ 

Remembering this, Harrington felt that he could not, at the 
very beginning of things, pester his brother for a loan. The 
same court of appeal, the father's well-filled purse, was open 
to him, but he had no excuse, to ofter, no reason to give, for 
exceeding his allowance. 

He might sell ^Mahmud if there were not two obstacles to 
that transaction. The first that nobody in the neighborhood 
wanted to buy him, the second that he was not yet paid for, 
except by that bill which rose like a pale blue specter before 
the young man's eyes as he was dropping ofi to sleep of a 
night, and sometimes spoiled his rest. He would have to sell 
Mahmud in order not to dishonor that bill; and if the horse 
should fetch considerably less than the price given for him, as 
all equine experience led his owner to fear, whence was to 
come the difference? That was a problem which would have 
to be solved somehow before the tenth of February. He 
would have to send the beast to Tattersall's, most likely, the 
common experience of the hunting field having taught him 
that nobody ever sells a horse among his own circle. He saw 


S20 THE HAY WILL COME. 

himself realizing something under fifty pounds as the price of 
the black, and having to bridge over the distance between that 
amount and eighty as best he might. But February was not 
to-morrow, and he had first of all to provide for to-morrow; 
a mere trifle, but it would have to be borrowed, and the sensa- 
tion of borrowing was new to Matthew Dalbrook^s son. He 
had frittered away his ready money at the university, and he 
had got into debt; but he had never borrowed money of Jew 
or Gentile. And now the time had come when he must borrow 
of whomsoever he could. 

He took tea with his sisters in the good, homely old-fashioned 
drawing-room, which was at its best in winter; the three tall 
narrow windows closely curtained, a roaring fire in the wide iron 
grate, and a modern Japanese tea-table wheeled in front of it. 
Five-o'clock tea was of a more substantial order on Sundays 
than on week-days, on account of the nine-o'clock supper 
which took the place of the seven-o'clock dinner, and accom- 
modated those who cared to attend evening church. Lady 
Baldwin's Spartan luncheon had not indisposed her guest for 
cake and muffins, and basking in the glow of the fire, Harring- 
ton forgot his troubles, enjoyed his tea, and maintained a very 
fair appearance of cheerfulness while his sisters questioned and 
his father put in an occasional word. 

‘‘I'm afraid you are getting rather too friendly at the 
Mount,” said Matthew Dalbrook. “ I don’t like Sir Henry 
Baldwin, and 1 don't think he's an advantageous friend for 
you.'' , , ■ 

“ Oh, but we're old chums," said Harrington, blushing a 
little; “ we were at Oxford together, you know." 

“ I'm afraid we both know it, Harry, and to our cost," re- 
plied his father. “ You might have succeeded in your divinity 
exam, if it hadn't been for this fine gentleman friend of 
yours." 

“ I'm not sorry I failed, father. The law suits me ever so 
much better than the Church. " 

“ As long as you stick to that opinion I'm satisfied. Only 
don't go to the Mount too often, and don't let the handsome 
Miss Baldwin make a fool of you." 

If it had not been for the colored shades over the lamps, 
which were so artistic as to be useless for seeing purposes, 
Harrington might have been seen to turn pale. 

“No fear of that," Sophia exclaimed, contemptuously. 
“ Juliet Baldwin is not likely to give a provincial solfcitor any 
encouragement. She's a girl who expects to marry for posi- 
tion, and though she is just a shade passee, she may make a 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


221 


good match even yet. She comes here because she likes us, 
but she’s a thorough woman of the world, and. you needn’t be 
afraid of her running after Harry. ” 

Harrington grew as red as a peony with suppressed indigna- 
tion. 

“ Perhaps as the Baldwins are my friends you might be able 
to get on without talking any more about them,” he said, 
scowling at his elder sister. “ I’ve told you what we had for 
lunch, and how many servants were in the room, and* what 
kind of gown Juliet — Miss Baldwin — was wearing. Don’t you 
think we’ve had enough of them for to-night?” 

. “ Quite enough, Harry, quite enough,” said the father. 
“ By the bye, did you read the ‘ Times ’ leader on Gladstone’s 
last manifesto? And where are the ‘ Field ’ and the ‘ Ob- 
server?’ Bring me over , a lamp that I can see by, Sophy, my 
dear. Those new-fangled lamp-shades of yours suggest one of 
Orchardson’s pictures, but they don’t help me to read my 
paper.” 

“ They’i;e the bestliest things I ever saw,” said Harrington, 
vindictively. 

“ I’m sorry you don’t like them,” said Janet. “ It was 
Juliet Baldwin who persuaded us to buy them. She had seen 
some like thenf at Medlow Court, and she raved about them.” 

Harrington went out of the room without another word. 
How odious his sisters had become of late! yet while he was at 
Oxford they had regarded him as an oracle, and he had found 
even sisterly appreciation pleasant. 

It was some time since he had attended evening service, but 
on this particular evening he went alone, not troubling to in- 
vite his sisterg, who were subject to an intermittent form of 
neuralgia which often prevented their going to church in the 
evening. To-night he avoided St. Peter’s, in which his father 
had seats, and went’ to the more remote church of Fordington, 
where he had a pew all to himself on this frosty winter night, 
except for one well-behaved worshiper in the person of his 
father’s old and confidential clerk, James Hayfield, a constant 
church-goer, who was punctual at every evening service, what-- 
ever the weather. Harrington had expected to see him there. 

Hayfield sat modestly aloof at the further end of the pew, 
but when the service was over the young man took some pains 
to follow close upon the heels of the gray-haired clerk, with 
shoulders bent by long years of desk-work, and respectable 
dark-blue Chesterfield overcoat with velvet collar. 

“ How do you do, Hayfield? Isn’t this rather a sharp night 


222 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


for you to venture out in?^^ said Harrington, as they left the 
church porch. 

“ I am a hardy old plant, I thank you, Mr. Harrington. It 
would take severer weather than this to keep me away from 
the evening service. I^’m very fond of the evening service. A 
fine sermon, sir, a fine, awakening sermon. 

“ Magnificent, capital!’^ exclaimed Harrington, who hadn’t 
heard two consecutive sentences, and whose mind had been 
engaged upon arithmetical' problems of the most unpleasant 
kind. ‘‘It is uncommonly cold, though, he added, shiver- 
ing. “ 1^11 walk round your way. It will be a little longer 
for me.^^ 

“ You^re very good, Mr. Harrington, very good, indeed, 
said the old clerk, evidently touched by this unusual condescen- 
sion. Never till to-night had his master^s son offered to walk 
home from church with him. 

The old man’s gratitude was more than Harrington could 
stand. He could not take credit for kindly condescension, 
when he knew himself intent upon his own selfish ends. 

“ I’m afraid I’m not ‘altogether disinterested in seeking your 
company to-night, Hayfield,” he blurted out. “ The fact is, 
I want to ask a favor of you. ” 

“You may take it as granted, Mr. Harrington,” answered 
the clerk, cheerily, “ provided the granting of it lies within 
my power.” 

“Oh, it’s not a tremendous affair — in point of fact, it’s 
only a small money matter. ' I’m^ exceeding my allowance a 
little this quarter, but I intend to pull up next quarter; and it 
will be a great convenience to me in the meantime if you’ll 
lend me ten or fifteen pouuds. ” 

It was out at last. He had no idea until he uttered the 
words how wretched and mean a creature the utterance of 
them would make him seem to himself. There are people 
who go through life borrowing, and who do it with the easiest 
grace, seeming to confer rather than to ask a favor. But per- 
haps even with these favored ones the first plunge was painful. 

“ Fifteen or twenty, if you like, sir,’^ replied Hayfield. 
“ I’ve got a few pounds in an old stocking, and any little sum 
like that is freely at your service. I know your father’s son 
won’t break his word or forget that an old servant's savings 
are his only bulwark against age and decay.” 

“ My dear Hayfield, of course I shall repay you next quarter, 
without fail.” 

“ Thank you, Mr. Harrington, I feel sure you will. And 
if at the same time I may venture a word, as an old man to a 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


223 


young ome, in all friendliness and respect, I would ask you to 
beware of horses. I heard some one let drop the other even- 
ing in the billiard-room at the Antelope, where I occasionally 
play a^ fifty, I heard it said, promiscuously, that Sir Henry 
Baldwin is a better hand at selling a horse than you are at 
buying one.'’’ 

‘ That’s bosh, Hayfield, and people in a God-forsaken town 
like Dorchester will always talk bosh — especially in a public 
billiard-room. The horse is a good horse, and I shall come 
home upon him when 1 send him up to Tattersall’s after the 
hunting.” 

“ I only hope he won’t come home upon you, sir. You’d 
better not put a high reserve upon him if you don’t want to 
see him again. I used to be considered a pretty good judge of 
a horse in my time. 1 never was an equestrian, but one sees 
more of a horse from the pavement than when one is on his 
back.” ' ■ 

Harrington felt that he must bear with this twaddle for the 
sake of the twenty pounds, which would enable him to lend 
Juliet a round fifty, and would thereby enable Juliet to go to 
Medlow Court and flirt with unknown men, and forget him 
upon whom her impecuniosity was inflicting such humiliation. 
After all, love is only another name for sufiering. 

Mr. Hayfield lived in West Walk Terrace, where he had a 
neat first floor in a stucco villa, semi-detached, and built at a 
period when villas strove to be architectural without attaining 
beauty. The first floor consisted of a front sitting-room, look- 
ing out upon the alley of sycamores and the green beyond, and 
a back bedroom, looking over gardens and houses, to the 
church towers in the heart of the town. 

Provided with a latch-key, Mr. Hayfield admitted his mas- 
ter’s son to the inner mysteries of thp villa, where a lady with 
a very reedy voice was singing “ Far away,” in the front par- 
lor, while a family conversation which almost drowned her 
melody was, going on in the back parlor. Mr. Hayfield’s bed- 
room candlestick and matches were ready for him on a Swiss 
bracket near his door, and his lamp was ready on a table in his 
sitting-room, where every object was disposed with a studied 
precision which marked at once the confirmed bachelor and 
the model lodger. “ The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “ The Chris- 
tian Year,” “Whittaker’s Almanack,” and “Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin,” were placed with mathematical regularity upon the 
walnut loo-table, surrounding a center-piece of wax flowers in 
an alabaster vase under a glass shade. A smaller table of the 
nature described as Pembroke was placed nearer the fire, and 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


224 : 

on this appeared Mr. Hayfield’s supper tray, set forth with a 
plate of cold roast beef, a glass saucer of Oriental pickle, 
cheese, and accompaniments, flanked by an imperial pint of 
Guinnesses. A small fire burned brightly in the grate, whose 
dimensions had been reduced by a careful adjustment of fire- 
bricks. 

“ Sit down, my dear Mr. Harrington; youeil find that chair 
very comfortable. I’ll go and get you the money. My cash- 
box is in the next room. Can I tempt you to join me in a 
plate of cold ribs? There’s plenty more where that came 
from. Mrs. Potter has a fine wing rib every Sunday, from 
year’s end to year’s end. I generally take my dinner with her 
and her family, but I sup alone. A little society goes a long 
way with a man of my age. I like my ‘ Lloyd ’ and niy 
‘ News of the World ’ after supper.” 

He went into his bedroom, which was approached by folding- 
doors, and came back again in two minutes with a couple of 
crisp notes, the savings of half a year, savings which meant a 
good deal of self-denial in a man who in his own words wished 
to live like a gentleman. The old clerk prided himself upon 
his good broadcloth, clean linen, and respectable lodgings; and 
it was felt in the town that so respectable a servant enhanced 
even the respectability of Dalbrook & Son. 

Harrington took the bank-notes with many thanks, and in- 
sisted upon writing a note of hand — the old clerk had to show 
him how to do it — at the desk where Hayfield wrote his letters 
and did any copying work he cared to do after office hours. 
He stayed while the old man eat his temperate meal, but 
would not be persuaded to share it. Indeed, his lips felt hot 
and dry, and it seemed to him as if he should never want to 
eat again; but he gladly accepted a tumbler of the refreshing 
Guinness’s upon the repeated assurance that there was plenty 
more where that came from. 

There was a rapid thaw on the following morning, so Har- 
rington rode the black over to the Mount in the twilight after 
office hours, a liberty which that high-bred animal resented by 
taking fright at every doubtful object in the long leafless 
avenue beyond the Roman Amphitheater. 

Trifles which would have been light as air to him, jogging 
homeward in company after a long day’s hunting, assumed 
awful and ghostly aspects under the combined influences of 
solitude and want of work. The twilight ride to the Mount 
was in fact a series of hair-breadth escapes, and it would have 
needed a stronger stimulant than the dowager’s wishy-washy 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


225 


tea to restore Mr. Dalbrook^s physical balance, if his mental 
balance had not been so thoroughly unhinged as to make him 
half unconscious of physical discomfort. ; 

“ You look awfully seedy,"'’ said Juliet, as she poured out 
tea from a pot that had been standing nearly half an hour. 

The dowager had retired to her own den, where she occupied 
a great portion of her life in writing prosy letters to her rela- 
tives and connections of all degrees; but as she never sent 
them anything else, this was her only way of maintaining the 
glow of family feeling. 

‘‘ The black nearly pulled my fingers ofi,"" replied Harring- 
ton. “ I never knew him so fresh. "" 

“ You should have taken it out of him on the downs,"" an- 
swered Juliet, rather contemptuously. “The grass is all 
right after the thaw. Have you brought me what you so 
'kindly promised?"" 

He took a sealed envelope out of his breast pocket, and 
handed it to her. 

“ Is this the fifty? How quite too good of you!"" she cried, 
pocketing it hastily. “You don"t know what a difficulty you 
have got me out of; but l"m afraid I may have inconvenienced 
you. "" 

This was evidently an after-thought. 

“Being your slave, what should 1 do but tend upon the 
hours and times of your desire?"" quoted Harrington, with a 
sentimental air. 

“ How sweet!"" exclaimed Juliet, really touched by his affec- 
tion; yet she would rather he had told her that fifty pounds 
was a sum' of no consequence, and that so small a loan in- 
volved no inconvenience for him. 

“I’m afraid his father can hardly be as rich as people 
think,"" she said to herself, while Harrington relaxed his 
strained muscles before the fire; 

“How I wish you were not going to Medlow!"" he said 
presently. 

“ So do I, but I can’t possibly get out of it, and then it’s a 
blessed escape to get away from here.” 

“ Do you really dislike your home?” asked her lover, won- 
dering at this hitherto unknown attribute in a young woman. 

“ I loathe it, and so does my sister, though she pretends to 
be domestic and religious and all that kind of thing. Lady 
Baldwin is an utterly impossible person, and our house-keeping 
would disgrace the Union. If I had not had the entre^^ of 
plenty of good houses, and been in request, I should have been 
found hanging in one of the attics years ago.” 


226 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


This candor gave Harrington an uncomfortably chilly feel- 
ing, as if a damp cold wind had blown over him, and then he 
told himself that it would be his privilege to initiate this dear 
girl in the tranquil delights of a happy home, which, while 
modest in its pretensions, should yet be smart enough to satisfy 
her superior tastes and aspirations. 

When do you go?^^ he asked, preparing to take leave. 

“ To-morrow. Your kindness has made everything easy to 

Come back as soon as you can, love,^^ and then there was 
some lingering foolishness permissible between engaged lovers, 
and the beautiful Miss Baldwin's head reposed for two or three 
minutes upon the articled clerk^s shoulder, while he looked 
into her eyes and told her that they were stars to light him on 
to fame and fortune. 

‘‘ I hope they ^11 show you a short-cut,^' she said. 

He left her cheered by the thought that she was very fond 
of him; and so she was, but he was not the first, second, 
third, or fourth young man of whom she had been fond, nor 
was it a new thing to her to be told that her eyes were guiding 
stars. 

February had begun, the frost and snow had disappeared. 
There were soft breathings of spring in the breezes that blew 
over the broad grassy downs beyond the Eoman encampment, 
and the sportsmen of the neighborhood were rejoicing in open 
weather and lengthening daylight; but Juliet Baldwin was 
still at Medlow Court, and the lieart of Harrington Dalbrook 
was heavy as he set out in the pleasant morning for some dis- 
tant meet; and it was heavier as he rode home in the evening, 
after a day^s sport which had shown him only too distinctly- 
that the black horse was not so young as he had been. He 
hugged himself with the delusion that those indications of ad- 
vancing years which were but too obvious toward the close of 
a trying day across a heavy country would vanish after a 
Weeks’s rest, and that the horse would show no signs of stale- 
ness at TattersalFs, where he must inevitably be sold before 
the end of the month, his owner seeing no other way of meet- 
ing the bill that had been given in exchange for a beast whose 
name should have been not Mahmud, but White Elephant. 

Harrington^s sole motive for buying a hunter — or rather, 
his sole excuse for being trapped into the purchase — was the 
expectation of being able to ride to hounds in Miss Baldwin's 
company. She had said to him: ‘‘ You ought to hunt,^'’ and 
he had straightway hunted, just as, if she had told him to 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


227 


balloon, he would have ballooned. And now Juliet Baldwin 
was following the hounds in another county while he was in 
Dorsetshire plodding along dreary roads to inaccessible meets at 
places which would seem to have been chosen with a special 
study of everybody's inconvenience. The whole business was 
fraught with bitterness. He had never loved hunting for its 
own sake — had never possessed the single-mindedness of the 
genuine sportsman, who cares not for weather or country or 
companionship or hunger or thirst, so long as there is a fox at 
the beginning of the day and blood at the end. 

Juliet was out with the hounds three days a week. She 
wrote rapturous accounts o£ forty minutes here, and an hour 
there; and every run which she described was apparently the 
quickest thing that had ever been known in that country. 
She let her lover know m passant that she had been greatly 
admired, and that her horsemanship had been talked about. 
Her letters were very affectionate, but they testified also to a 
self-love that amounted to adoration. Her frocks, her horses 
— provided, as the young ravens are fed, by a kindly Provi- 
dence in the shape of casual acquaintance — her breaks at bill- 
iards, her waltzing, were all dilated upon with a charming ease 
and frankness. 

“ It seems rather foolish to write all this egotistical twad- 
dle,^’ she apologized, “ but you complain if 1 send you a short 
letter, and there is literally nothing to tell here — at least noth- 
ing about any one you know,'or that would have the faintest 
interest for you — so I am obliged to scribble about my frocks 
and my little social triumphs.^’ 

This was kindly meant, no doubt, but it stung him to be 
reminded that his friends were not her friends, that Belgravia 
is not further from Islington than her people were from his 
people. 

In one of her letters she wrote casually : 

“ Why don't you put Mahmud into a horse-box and come 
over for a day with these .hounds? It would be capital fun. 
There is a dear little rustic inn where you and your horse can 

put up — and Lady B would ask you to dinner as a matter 

of course. I dare say your highly respectable hair will stand 
on end at some of our ways — but that won^t matter. I am 
sure you would enjoy an evening or two at Medio w. Think 
about it, like a dear boy. 

Harrington did think about it; indeed, from the first read- 
ing of his lady-love's unceremonious invitation he thought of 
nothing else. After much puzzling Dver time-tables he found 
th^t trains — those particular trains which condescend, with an 


22S 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


asterisk, to convey horses — could be ma,tched so as to convey 
the black horse to the immediate vicinity of Medlow Court in 
something under a day, and this being so, he telegraphed his 
intention of putting up at the Medlow Arms on the following 
night, taking pains to add, “ Shall arrive at five p. so as 
to secure the promised invitation to dinner. He had been so 
chary of spending money since his loan to J uliet that he had 
still a few pounds in hand, enough, as he thought, to pay trav- 
eling expenses and hotel bills. His heart was almost light as 
he packed his hunting-gear and dress-suit, albeit February 
27fch was written in fiery characters across a spectral bill which 
haunted him wherever he went. 

It was still early in the month, he told himself. Some stroke 
of luck might happen to him. Some rich young fool at Med- 
low Court might take a fancy to Mahmud and want to buy 
him. He had heard of men who wanted to buy horses, al- 
though it had been his fate to meet only the men who were 
eager to sell. 

After no less than* three changes of trains, he arrived at the 
Toppleton Eoad Station — for Medlow and Toppleton — about 
half past four, weary, but full of hope. He was to see her 
again, after three weeks^ severance. He was going at her own 
express desire. ** It was her tact and cleverness that had made 
the visit easy for him. Had he not Lady Burdenshaw’s invita- 
tion in his pocket, in a fine, open-hearted hand, sprawling 
over three sides of large note-p%)er? 

Dear Mr. Dalbrook,— I hear you are cgming over for a 
day or two with our hounds, and I hope you will contrive to 
dine with us every evening while you are in the neighborhood. 
Your father and Sir Phillimore were old friends. Dinner at 
eight. Sincerely yours, 

Sarah Burdeksh aw. 

Sir Phillimore had been in the family vault nearly fifteen 
years. The malicious averred that he had sought that dismal 
shelter as a refuge and a relief from the life which Lady Bur- 
denshaw imposed upon him— open house, big shoots, hunting 
breakfasts, fancy balls, and private theatricals in the country; 
and in London perpetual parties or perpetual gadding about. 

Sir Phillimore's grandfather had come up from Aberdeen, a 
raw boy without a penny, and had found out something about 
the manufacture of iron which had eventually made him a 
millionaire. Sir Phillimore^s fortune had reconciled the beau- 
tiful Sally Tempest to ^ marriage with a man who was her 
senior by a quarter of a century, and the only license she had 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


329 


allowed herself had been her indulgence in a boundless ex- 
travagance, and a laxity of manner which had somewhat 
shocked society in the sober fifties and sixties, though i-t left 
her moral character uuimpeached. 

In the eighties nobody wondered or exclaimed at Lady Bur- 
denshaw^s freedom of speech and manner, or at the manners 
she encouraged in her guests. In the eighties Sarah Burden- 
shaw was generally described as “ good fun.^^ 

.Harrington found the dear little rustic inn very picturesque 
externally, but small and stufiy within, and the bedroom into 
which he was ushered was chiefly occupied by a large old-fash- 
ioned four-post bedstead, with chintz hangings that smelled of 
mildewed lavender; indeed, the pervading odor of the Medio w 
Arms was mildew. He dressed as well as he could under con- 
siderable disadvantages; and a rumbling old landau, which 
had the local odor, conveyed him to Medlow Court much 
quicker than he could have supposed possible from his casual 
survey of the horse, and at ten minutes to eight he was in Lady 
Burdenshaw^s drawing-room. 

It was a very large room, prettily furnished in a careless 
style, as if by a person whose heart was not set upon furniture. 
There were plenty of low luxurious chairs, covered with a 
rather gaudy chintz, and befrilled with lace and muslin, and 
there were flowers in abundance; but of human life the room 
was empty. 

Harrington hardly knew whether he was relieved or discom- 
posed at finding himself alone. He had leisure in which to 
pace the room two or three times, to arrange his tie and in- 
spect his dress-suit before one of the long glasses, and then to 
feel offended at Juliet’s coldness. She knew that he was to be 
there. She might surely have contrived to be in the drawing- 
room ten minutes before the dinner-hour. 

Half a dozen people straggled in, a not too tidy-looking 
matron in ruby velvet, a sharp-featured girl in black lace, and 
some men who looked sporting or military. One of these 
talked to him. 

I think you must be Mr. Dalbrook,” he said, after they 
had discussed the weather and the state of the roads. 

You are quite right; but how did you guess?” 

“ Miss Baldwin told me you were coming, and I don’t think 
-there’s any one else expected to-night. Do you know your 
hostess?” 

“lam waiting for that privilege.” 

“ Ah, that explains your punctuality. Nobody is ever 
punctual at Medlow. Eight o’clock means half past, and 


230 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


sometimes a quarter to nine. Lady Burdenshaw has reached 
her sixtieth year without having arrived at a comprehension of 
the nature of time, as an inelastic thing which will not stretch 
to suit feminine convenience. She still believes in the elas- 
ticity of an hour, and rushes off to her room to dress when she 
ought to be sitting down to dinner. Her girl friends follow 
her example, and seldom leave the billiard-room or the tea- 
room till dear Lady B leads the way.’’ ^ 

A whole bevy of ladies entered the room rather noisily at 
this moment, and among them appeared Juliet, magnificent 
in a red gown, which set off the milky whiteness of her shoul- 
ders. 

‘‘Bather a daring combination with red hair,” remarked 
the young lady in black, who was sitting on a narrow causeuse 
with a large man, whose white mustache and padded chest 
suggested a cavalry regiment. 

“You may call the lady a harmony in red,” said the gen- 
tleman. 

Harrington scowled upon these prattlers, and then crossed 
the room to greet his love. Yes, it was a daring combination, 
the scarlet gown with the ruddy tints in her auburn hair; but 
the audacity was justified by success. She looked a magnifi- 
cent creature, dazzling as Vashti in her Eastern splendor, in- 
vincible as Delilah. Who could resist her? 

She gave her hand to Harrington, and seemed pleased to 
see him, but in the next moment he saw her looking beyond 
him toward the end of the room. He turned, involuntarily 
following the direction of her eyes, and saw the man who had 
talked to him, and who was now evidently watching them. 
He was a middle-aged man, handsome, tall, and- upstanding, 
and with an air which Harrington considered decidedly patri- 
cian. 

“ Who is that man by the piano?” he asked. 

“ Major Swanwick, Lord Beaulieu^s younger brother.-’^ 

“Ah, I thought he was a swell,” said Harrington, inno- 
cently. “ He was very civil to me just now. You might have 
been in the drawing-room a little earlier, Juliet. You must 
have known that I was longing to see you.” 

“ My dear boy, we were playing skittle-pool till five min- 
utes to eight. I had no idea you were in the house. Ah, 
here comes Lady B .” 

A fat, fair, flaxen-haired lady in a sky-blue tea-gown em- 
broidered with silver palm-leaves came rolling into the room, 
murmuring apologies for having kept people waiting for their 
dinner. 


THE BAY WILL COME. 


231 


“ I know you must all be delightfully ravenous/^ she said; 
“ and after all, that’s much better than feeling that dinner 
has come too soon after lunch. ” 

J uliet introduced her friend, who was most graciously re- 
ceived. 

“How is your father?” asked Lady Burdenshaw. “ It is 
ages since 1 saw him — more than twenty years, I believe. Sir 
Phillimore bought some land in your county, and Mr. Hal- 
brook acted for him in the matter, and he still receives the 
rents. And so you are going out with the hounds to-morrow? 
They meet quite near— not more than seven or eight miles 
from your inn. J uliet will show you the way across country. 
She’s always in the first flight; but if you want to know her 
particular talent you should see her play pool. I can' assure- 
you she makes all the men sit up.” 

Harrington scarcely followed the old lady’s meaning. There 
was no time for explanations, as the butler, who had feen wait- 
ing for her ladyship’s appearance,. now announced dinner, and 
Harrington had the bliss of going to the dining-room with 
J uliet Baldwin on his arm. He felt as if he were in the Mos- 
lem ’s enchanted fields as he sat by her side at the brilliant 
table, with its almost overpowering perfume of hot-house fiow- 
ers, which were grouped in great masses of bloom among the 
old silver and the many-colored Venetian glass with a tropical 
luxuriance. Yes, it was a Mohammedan paradise, and this 
was the houri, this lovely creature with the milky shoulders 
rising out of soft folds of scarlet crape. 

“ How long are you going to stay here, Juliet?” he asked, 
as the houri unfolded her napkin. 

She gave a little laugh before she answered the question. 

“ Compare this room and table with our dining-rqoni at the 
Mount — you can compare the dinner with my mother’s dinners 
after you have eaten it — and ask yourself if any reasonable 
creature would be in a hurry to leave this Canaan for that 
desert. I’m afraid I shall stop as long as ever dear old Lady 

B asks me; and she is always pressing me to extend my 

visit.” 

“I don’t think dinner can be much of an attraction in 
your mind, Juliet,” said Harrington. 

“Of course not; girls don’t care what they eat,” replied 
Juliet, sipping her clear soup, and most fully appreciating the 
quintessential delicacy of the flavor. “ But there are so many 
advantages at Medlow. There is the hunting, for instance, 
which is much better than any 1 can get at home, where I 


232 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


have positively no horse that I can, call my own. Here 1 can 
always rely upon a^ood mount/ ^ 

“ Has Lady Burdenshaw a large stable?^^ 

“ Oh, she keeps a good many horses; but there are other 
people who are ready to oblige me. There are men who come 
here with strings of hunters, and have always a young one that 
they like me to handle for them.^^., 

“ Juliet, you will get your neck broken, cried Harrington, 
pale with horror, and staring vacantly at the fish that was 
being offered to him. 

“ There is no fear of that while I ride young horses; the 
danger is an old one. My father taught me to ride, and as he 
was one of the best cross-country riders in Dorset, I am not 
likely to make a mistake. You had better try that sole Nor^ 
mande; it is one of the Medlow specialties.-’^ 

“ Juliet, I hate the idea of your staying in this house — or 
in any house where there is a crowd of fast men. I hate the 
idea of your riding other men’s horses — of your being under 
an obligation to a stranger — ” 

“ Don’t I tell you that the obligation is all the other way. 
A young hunter is a more saleable article when he has carried 
a lady. ‘ Will suit a bold horsewoman in a stiff country. ’ 
That sort of thing is worth a great deal in a catalogue, and the 
men whose horses I ridd are not strangers.” 

“ At the most they are casual acquaintances.” 

‘‘ Call them that if you like. Why should not one profit 
by one’s acquaintances?’^ 

“ There is one of your benefactors looking at you at this 
moment, and looking as if he objected to my talking to you.” 

“ How dare you talk about my benefactors? Do you sup- 
pose 1 had you invited to Medlow in order that you might in- 
sult me?” 

This little dialogue was conducted in subdued tones, but 
with a good deal oi acrimony upon either side. Harrington 
was bursting with jealousy. 

The house, thC men, the very atmosphere awakened dis- 
trust. He detested those men for the square shoulders and 
soldierly bearing, for the suggestion of cavalry and crack regi- 
ments which seemed to him to pervade the masculine portion 
of the assembly. He had always hated military men. Their 
chief mission in life seemed to be to make civilians look insig- 
nificant. 

Miss Baldwin eat the next entree in stony silence, and it was 
not till he had abjectly apologized for his offensive speech that 
her lover was again taken into favor. She relent^ at last. 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


233 


however, and favored him with a good deal of information 
about the house-party which made such a brilliant show at 
Lady Burdenshaw^s luxurious board. 

The men were for the most part military — the greater num^ 
ber bachelors, or at any rate unencumbered with wives. Two 
had been divorced, one was a widower, another was separated 
in the friendliest way fron\ a wife who found she could live in 
better style unfettered by matrimonial supervision. 

Major Swan wick was one of the two who had profited by 
Sir James Hanen^s jurisdiction. 

“ His wife was Lady Flora Thurles, one of the Orkneys. 
All the Orkney girls went wrong, donT you know. It was in 
the blood. ♦ 

“ You and he seem to be great friends, said Harrington, 
still suspicious. 

‘‘ Oh, we have met very often; he is quite an old chum of 
mine. He is a good old thing. 

Seeing that the good old thing looked as if he were well 
under five-and-thirty, Harrington was not altogether reas- 
sured, even by this comfortable tone. He watched his be- 
trothed and the major all through the long evening in the bill- 
iard-room, where pool was again the chief amusement of a 
very noisy party, of which Juliet and Major Swan wick seemed 
to him the ringleaders and master-spirits. It was with diffi- 
culty that he, the affianced, got speech with his betrothed. 

There were just a few minutes, while the old family tank- 
ards were being carried round with mulled claret and other hot 
drinks, in which Juliet vouchsafed to giye her attention to her 
lover, he having in a manner cornered her into a draped recess 
at the end of the room, where he held her prisoner while he 
bade her good-night. 

‘‘ I shall see you at the meet to-morrow, he said. 

‘‘ I wonT promise to be at the meet, but I shall find you 
and the hounds in plenty of time. I know every inch of this 
country. 

“ Whose horse are you going to rjde to-morrow?^^ 

“ A fine upstanding chestnut; I'm^sure you’ll admire him.” 

Yes, yes, but whose?” 

Whose?” echoed Juliet, as if she scarcely understood the 
word. ‘‘Oh,” with a sudden flash of intelligence; “you 
mean whose property is he? As if that mattered! He belongs 
to Major Swan wick.” 

“ Good-night,” said Harrington, and he went ofE to take 
leave of Lady Burdenshaw, who was sitting in the capacious 
ingle nook, with a circle of men about her telling her anec- 


334 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


dotes in Parisian French, from whom every now and then there 
burst peals of jovial laughter. - 

“ At my age one understands everything, and one may hear 
everything,^’’ said her ladyship. 

Harrington went back to the Medlow Arms more depressed 
than he had felt during any period of his love. Instinct had 
warned him of the dangers that must lurk in such a house as 
Medlow Court for such a girl as ‘Juliet Baldwin; but neither 
instinct nor imagination had prepared him for the horrible 
reality. To see the woman who was to be his wife smoking 
cigarettes, playing shilling pool, and bandying doubtful iokes 
with men who had obviously the very poorest opinion of the 
opposite sex, was an agony which he had never thought to 
eufter; and mr the first time since his engagement he asked 
himself whether it would not have been better to have trusted 
his future happiness to the most insipid and colorless of the 
girls with whom he played tennis than to this magnificent 
Specimen of emancipated smartness. The image of Juliet 
sprawling over the billiard-table, with her eyes on fire and her 
shoulders half out of her gown as she took a difiicult life, pur- 
sued him like a nightmare all through his wakeful hours and 
troubled snatches of ’ sleep. The stony paillasse and lumpy 
feather-bed would not have been conducive to slumber under 
the happiest circumstances; but for a mind disturbed by care 
they were a bed of torture. 'He rose at seven, unrefreshed, 
heavy-hearted, detesting chanticleer, cloudy skies, and all the 
old-fashioned fuss about a hunting morning, and wishing him- 
self in his comfortable room in the good old house in Oornhill, 
where he had ample space and all things needful to a luxurious 
toilet. He got himself dressed somehow. He was in the sad- 
dle at nine o^’clock, after a breakfast for which he had no ap- 
petite. 

It was a long, dreary ride to the little road-side inn at which 
the hounds met, and Harrington, being particularly punctual, 
had to jog along companionless till the last ’mile, when Major 
Swanwick and another man from Medlow overtook him and 
regaled him with their talk for the rest of the way. 

“ I think I know that black horse,” said the major, who 
looked provokingly well in his red coat, chimney-pot, and 
cream-colored tops, thereby making Harrington ashamed of 
his neat dark-gray coat, Bedford fords, and bowler hat. 
“ WasnT he in Baldwin’s stud nine years ago?” 

“ I bought him of Sir Henry Baldwin.” 

‘‘ Thought so. Good hand at selling a horse, Baldwin! 
However, I suppose there’s some work in the black horse yet. ” 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


235 

I hope so; for I mean to hunt him to the end of the sea- 
son, ” answered Harrington, ignoring that awful necessity of 
selling before the end of the month. 

Hope glowed faintly in his breast as he saw the major^s keen 
eye going over his mount, as if studying the condition of every 
limb and every muscle. 

“ Wears well,^^ he said, after this deliberate survey; “ but 
I^m afraid you^ll find him like the wonderful one-horse shay. 
He^ll go to pieces all at once. Did Baldwin tell you his age?^’ 
He said something about rising eight; but I didn^t inquire 
very particularly, as I know the horse is a good one. 

‘‘ And it was a good one of Baldwin to talk about rising 
eight. He would have been within the mark if he had said 
rising eighteen, l-’ve bought a horse of Sir Henry myself, 
and'^^ — after a brief pause — “ IVe sold him one.^^ 

And I dare say that made you even,^^ said Harrington, with 
acidity. He would have liked to call the major out for his 
insolence, and almost regretted that he was a Briton, and not 
a Frenchman and a professed duelist. 

‘‘ Faith, I don^t think he had altogether the best of me, for 
when he rode that hunter of mine he was like the little old 
woman in the nursery rhyme, of whom it was said that she 
should have music wherever she went. He had music, and to 
spare. 

And so with jovial laughter fiiey rode up to the open space 
in front of the Bed Cow, where the hounds were grouped 
about a duck-pond, while the master chatted with his friends. 

It was an hour later before Juliet appeared, cropping up 
suddenly on a windy common, with three other girls and two 
men, while the hounds were drawing the furze. 

“ You see I could make a pretty good guess where to find 
you,’^ she said to Harrington. “ How well the black looks! 
You have been saving him up, 1 suppose?'’^ 

“No, I^ve hunted as often as I could. I had no other dis- 
traction during your absence. 

“How sweet of you to say that, with all the gayeties of 
Dorchester to allure you! Hark! they^ve found, and we shall 
be off in a minute. Yes, there he goes!"" pointing with her 
whip to the spot where the fox had fiashed across the short 
level sward, vanishing next moment in the withered heather. 
“ Now you’ll see what this horse can do, and you can tell me 
what you think of him when we meet at dinner. ” 

There was the usual minute or so of flutter and expectation, 
and then -the business-like calm — an almost awful calm — every 


m 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


man settling down to his work, intent upon himself, steering 
carefully for a good place. 

Harrington was a nervous rider, and if fortune helped him 
to get a good place he rarely kept it. To-day he was more 
than usually nervous, fancying that Juliet^s eye was upon him, 
which it wasnT, and, indeed, could not have been, unless it 
had been situated in the back of her head, since she was already 
ever so far in front. 

In time, however, he too contrived to settle down, and the 
black horse took the business into his own hands, and kept his 
rider fairly close to the hounds. For the first twenty minutes 
there was a good deal of jumping, but of a mildish order, and 
Harrington felt that he was distinguishing himself, inasmuch 
as he was able to stick to his horse, though not always to his 
saddle. 

They lost their first fox, after a very fair run, and they 
waited about for nearly two hours before they started a second, 
which they did eventually in a scrubbing copse on the skirts of 
a great stretch of plowed land. 

The plow took a good deal out of Mahmud, and after the 
plow came a series of small fields, with some stiffish fences, 
which had to be taken by any man who wanted to keep with 
the hounds. Here Juliet was in her glory, for the chestnut on 
which she was mounted was a fine fencer, and she knew how 
to handle him, or, perhaps it may be said, how to let him 
alone. 

Mahmud had been almost as fine a fencer as the fiery young 
chestnut, and he was a horse of great heart, always ready to 
attempt more than he could do. The livery-stable people had 
told Harrington that if his legs were only as good as his heart 
he would be one of the best hunters in the county. And now, 
with some quavering of spirit on his own part, Harrington 
trusted that heart would stand instead of legs, and get him 
and the black over the fences somehow. Just at this crucial 
point in the run Juliet was in front of him, and Major Swan- 
wick was pressing him behind. He was near the hounds, and 
altogether in a place of honor, could he but keep it; and to 
keep it he felt was worth a struggle. 

He got over or through the first fence somehow; not glori- 
ously, but without too much loss of time, and galloped gayly 
toward the second, which looked a stiff er and more complicat- 
ed affair. Juliet’s horse went over like a bird, and Juliet sat 
him like a butterfly, no more discomposed by the shock 
if she had been some winged insect that had lighted on his 
haunches. Mahmud followed close, excited by the horse in 


THE BAY WILL COME. 


237 


‘ front of him, and rose to his work gallantly; but this time it 
was tiniber aijd not quick-set that had to be cleared, and that 
stiff rail was just too much for the old hunter ^s legs. He 
blundered, hit himself with the sharp edge of the rail, and fell 
heavily forward, sending his rider flying into the next field, 
and sinking in a struggling mass into the ditch. Major Swan- 
wick dismounted in an instant, scrambled over the hedge, and 
ran to help Harrington up. 

“ Are you hurt?’’’ 

“Hot much,^^ answered the fallen man, staggering to his 
feet, hatless, and with a dazed look. “ l^m afraid my horse is 
done for, though, poor old chap.^^ 

In that moment his only thought was of the beast he had 
been fond of, which had been to him as a friend, albeit often 
an unmanageable one. He had no thought just then of the 
money value of that doubled-up mass lying in the ditch. 

Mahmud had finished his course. His forearm was broken, 
and the most merciful thing was to make a swift end of him 
with a bullet from a gun, which one of the whips fetched from 
the nearest farm-house. His owner stood by him and waited 
for the end, while Juliet and the rest of the hunt galloped 
away out of sight, and when the shot had been fired the black 
horse was left to be carted off to the kennels, and Harrington 
turned to walk slowly and sorrowfully to the farm-house, 
where he was promised a trap to convey him to the Medlow 
Arms. 

Then and then only did he discover that he had dislocated 
his shoulder, and was suffering acute agony, and then and 
then only did he remember the acceptance which he had given 
for the black horse. 

Where now were the fifty pounds which he had reckoned 
upon getting for the animal at TattersalTs, trusting to Provi- 
dence, or old Hayfield, to make up the balance of thirty? He 
saw himself now with that acceptance falling due and no as- 
sets. 

He got back to the rustic inn with great suffering, and laid 
himself down upon the stony-hearted four-poster instead of 
dressing himself to go and dine at Medlow. The village sur- 
geon came and attended to his shoulder, a painful business, 
though not unskillfully done; and then he was told he must 
keep himself as quiet as possible for a few days, and must not 
think of traveling till the inflammation was reduced. It was 
his right shoulder on which he had fallen, and he was utterly 
helpless. The handy young man of the Medlow Arms had to 
valet him and assist him to eat the tough mutton-chop which 


m 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


was served to him in lieu of all the delicacies of Medlow Court. 

A messenger came from that hospitable mansion at ten o’clock 
with a little note from Juliet: 

Why did you not turn up at dinner-time? Major Swan- . 
wick said you were all right. I waited till I saw you get up, 
safe and sound. So sorry for poor old Mahmud. Come to 
breakfast to-morrow and tell us all about it. We killed in a 
quarter of an hour. Yours, 

“ Juliet.” 

Harrington sent his best regards to Miss Baldwin and his 
apologies to Lady Burdenshaw, and begged to inform them 
that he had dislocated his shoulder, and was unable to write. 

He had a miserable night — sleepless and in pain — haunted 
by the ghost of Mahmud, whose miserable end afflicted him 
sorely, and troubled by the perplexities of ‘ his financial posi- 
tion. Should he tell his father the whole truth? Alas! it 
seemed only yesterday that he had told his father the whole 
truth about his college debts; and though truthfulness is a 
great virtue, a second confession, coming on the heels of the 
first might be too much for Mr. Dalbrook^’s patience. 

Should he borrow the money from Juanita? Ho, too hu- 
miliating. He had always felt a restraining pride in all his 
intercourse with his grand relations at Cheriton Chase. They 
were of his own blood; but they were above him in social 
status, and he was sensitively alive to the difference in posi- 
tion. 

Could he apply to his brother? Again the answer was in 
the negative. He doubted whether Theodore possessed eighty 
guineas in the world. 

And so he went on revolving the same considerations through 
his fevered brain all through the long winter night. There 
were moments of exasperation and semi-delirium, when he 
thought he would go over to Medlow Court, as soon as he was 
able to move, and appeal to the beneficence of Lady Burden- 
shaw for the temporary accommodation of a check for eighty 
guineas. 

And thus the night wore on till the morning sounds of the 
inn brought the sense of stern reality across his feverish 
dreams; and then, amid the crowing of cocks and the bump- 
ing of pails and the tramping of horses in the stable-yard, he 
contrived to fall asleep, after having failed in that endeavor 
all through the quiet of the night. 

It was about half past eleven, and the handy man had helped 
him to make a decent toilet and to transfer himself to a sofa 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


239 


that was a little harder than the bed, when a pony-carriage 
drove up to the door, and the chamber-maid came in with an 
awe-stricken , face to announce Lady Burdenshaw and another 
lady, and would he please to see them, as they wanted to 
come upstairs. 

The room was tidy, and he was dressed as well as a helpless 
man could be, so he said yes, they might come up, which was 
almost unnecessary, as they were already on the stairs, and 
were in the room a minute afterward. . 

Juliet expressed herself deeply concerned at her lover ^s mis- 
fortune, though she did not attempt to conceal from him that 
she considered his riding in fault. Lady Burdenshaw was 
more sympathetic, and was horrified at the discomfort of his 
surroundings. 

“ You can not possibly endure that cruel-looking sofa till 
your shoulder is well,^^ she said, “ and such a small room, 
too, poor fellow; and a horrid low ceiling, and the house 
smells damp. I wonder if we could venture to move him to 
the Court, Ju?’"’ 

Ju was decidedly of opinion that such a proceeding would 
be to the last degree dangerous. 

“ The only chance for his shoulder is to keep quiet, she 
said. 

Unfortunately, the surgeon had said, the same thing, and 
there could be no doubt about it. 

“ Perhaps you could send him a sofa?^^ suggested Juliet. 

“ Of course I could; and I can send him soups and jellies 
and things — but that isn’t like having him at Medio w, where 
he could have a large airy room, and where you and I could 
take it in turns to amuse him.” 

‘‘Dear Lady Burdenshaw, you are too good to an almost 
stranger,” murmured Harrington, moved to the verge of tears 
by her geniality. 

“ Stranger! fiddlesticks. Don’t I know your cousin. Lord 
Cheriton; and has not your father done business for me? Be- 
sides, I like young men, when they’re modest and pleasant, 
as you are. Indeed I sometimes like them when they’re im- 
pertinent. I like young faces and young voices about me. I 
like to be amused, and to see people happy. I can’t endure 
the idea of your lying for ever so many days and nights in this 
dog-kennel, when you came to Medlow to enjoy yourself.” 

“ It mustn’t be many days and nights. I must get home 
somehow by the end of the week, if I post all the way.” 

“ Oh, you needn’t post. When you are able to be moved. 


240 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


my carriage shall take you to the station; and 1^11 get the rail- 
road people to take an invalid carriage through to Dorchester 
for you. 

“ Indeed, you must not be impatiejj^t, Harry, said Juliet. 
“ 1 shall come to see you every day, except on the hunting 
days, and even then I can walk over in the evening if Lady 
B will let me. ” 

“ Of course I shall let you. All my sympathies are with 
lovers, and when you are married I shall give Mr. Dalbrook as 
much of my business as I possibly can venture to take away 
from those dear old fossils at Salisbury who have been the 
family lawyers for the best part of a century.” 

J uliet had confided her engagement to Lady B at the be- 
ginning of her visit, and she and Lady B had talked over the 

young many’s chances of doing well in the world, and the wis- 
dom or the foolishness of such an alliance. Lady B had 

seen a good deal of smart young men and women, and she had 
discovered that the smart young men were very keen in the 
furtherance of their own interests, and the smart young wom- 
en had considerable difficulty in getting themselves permanent- 
ly established in the smart world by smart marriages. Some 
were beautiful, and many were admired; but they had to wait 
for eligible suitors, and one false step in the early stages of 
their career would sometimes blight their chances of success. 
J uliet had taken many false steps, and had got herself a good 
deal talked about, and Lady Burdenshaw felt that her chance 
of making an advantageous match had been lessening year by 
year until it had come to be almost nil. 

If this young fellow is sensible and good-looking, and has 
a little money, I really think, J u, you ought to marry him, ” 
concluded Lady B , talking the matter over with her pro- 

tegee before she*had seen Harrington. ‘ 

She fancied that Juliet had cooled somewhat in her feelings 
toward her youthful lover within the last week or ten days. 
It might be. Lady Burdenshaw thought, that she began to 
perceive that he was too young, that the difference in their 
ages, which was not much, and the difference in their worldly 
experience, which was enormous, unfitted them to be happy 
together. 

“No doubt the young man is 2 ,'pis alter, reflected Lady 
Burdenshaw, after Harrington ^s appearance at Medlow; “ but 
he is a very good-looking fellow and by no means bad — as 
a pis alter. Of course he is too young for Juliet, and much 
too fresh and innocent to understand her; but if he knew 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


241 


more he wouldn^t be so eager to marry her, so she ought to 
be satisfied.^" 

Lady Burdenshaw sent a delightful sofa and a lot of books, 
flowers, pillows, foot-resffe, and other luxuries in one of her 
own wagons, within an hour of her return to Medio w, and 
Harrington^s comfort was considerably increased by her kind- 
ness. Still, the thought of that wretched acceptance was like 
a thorn in every cushion, a scorpion under every pillow, a wasp 
in every flower. Nor was he altogether at ease about Juliet. 
He thought that he had detected a constraint in her manner, 
a shiftiness in her lovely eyes. It had wounded him that she 
had so promptly opposed his being conveyed to Medio w. It 
might be that she was influenced only by concern for his safety; 
yet it would have been natural for his betrothed to wish to 
have him under the same roof with her, where she might tend 
and comfort him in his helplessness. Pain and anguish were 
wringing his brow, and she who should have been his minister- 
ing angel was content to limit her ministration to half an hour 
of somewhat disjointed conversation, and to the polite atten- 
tion of bringing him the morning papers when everybody at 
Medlow had looked at them. 

Lady Burdenshaw had very kindly taken upon herself to 
write to Matthew Halbrook explaining his son^s prolonged ab- 
sence, and making light of his accident as a matter only in- 
volving a few days’ rest. 

The few days had gone on till the fourth day after his fall, 
and in spite of all that Lady Burdenshaw had done to amelior- 
ate his captivity, the hours of the day and the night seemed 
to grow longer and longer, till he began to think of Silvio 
Pellico and the man in the iron mask. Juliet ^s visits were 
very short, and she was evidently absent-minded and bored 
even during that scanty half hour which she gave to her be- 
trothed. ' 

“ I^m afraid you are like Colonel Enderby’s wife,^^ he said, 
‘‘ and that the sight of sickness or suffering is more than you 
can bear.^"’ 

Who was Colonel Enderby^s wife?^^ 

“ DonT you know? She is the heroine of a very clever 
novel — an original, strange, and, I fear, not unnatural char- 
acter.^’ 

“Don’t remember her,” answered Juliet, carelessly. “I 
don’t read many English novels. They are too slow for me.” 

On the hunting day he missed even that brief visit, and was 
expectant of her coming all the evening, as she had promised 


242 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


to make up for the day's absence. But the night was wet, 
and she told him next day that she did not like to take out 
Lady Burdenshaw's horse and man in such weather. 

“ The stable people would have resented it, and I am 
obliged to stand well with the stable," she said. 

He thought she had a troubled look that day. It seemed to 
him that it cost her an effort to keep her attention upon any 
subject, and she lapsed into silence every now and then, look- 
ing dreamily out of the window to the thatched roofs and 
plowed fields in the distance. 

I'm afraid you have something on your mind," he said. 

“ What nonsensfe! What put such an idea into your head?" 

“ You are so thoughtful and so much more silent than 
usual." 

“ There is so little to talk about in a sick-room. If I were 
to tell you about our doings at Medio w I should only bore 
you." 

‘‘Not at all. I should be very pleased to hear how you 
amuse yourself. Is Major Swan wick still there?" 

“ Yes; he is still there." 

He saw that her cheeks crimsoned as she answered his ques- 
tion, and he wondered whether she really had any penchant 
for the major, or whether she suspected his jealous apprehen- 
sions upon that subject. She got up to go before he could 
question her further. 

“ I shall be late for luncheon," she said, “ and Lady B 

hates any of us to be absent." 

“ I thought there was no such thing as punctuality at Med- 
low." 

“ Oh, we are pretty punctual at luncheon. It's the hungry 
hour, and we are alJ ravenous. Good-bye. " 

“ revoir ! You will come to-morrow, love; and come 
earlier, I hope." 

“ Pas possible ! I shall be out with the hounds." 

“ Another blank day for me. But don't disappoint me in 
the evening, whatever the weather may be. " 

She was gone, leaving him doubtful of her fidelity, though 
far from suspecting the extent of her falsehood. 

He endured the long, dull day as best he might, and im- 
proved his mind by skimming all the books which Lady Bur- 
denshaw had sent him, which were really the cream of Mudie's 
last supply — travels, memoirs, gossip, magazines — books 
chosen with a view to the masculine mind, which was supposed 
to be indifferent to fiction. Evening came at last, his lamp 
was lighted, his fire swept and garnished. The hunting-party 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


243 


would be jogging homeward in the wintery darkness, he 
thought. There were three hours to wait before half past 
nine, which was the earliest time at which he could expect his 
beloved. 

It was a little after the half hour, when his heart began to 
beat faster at the sound of carriage wheels. This time she 
was not going to disappoint him. He listened for her step 
upon the stair — the firm, quick tread he knew so well; but it 
was another step which he heard, a slower and heavier tread, 
with much rustling of silken draperies. It must be Lady Bur- 
denshaw come to chaperon her. 

It was Lady Burdenshaw, but alone. She came in and drew 
near his sofa with a serious countenance. 

‘‘ Great God!^’ he cried, starting up from his reclining 
position, “ is anything the matter? An accident in the hunt- 
ing-field? Is she hurt?^’ 

“No, my poor fellow. Slie^s not hurt. It would take a 
great deal to hurt her. She’s too hard. But she has done her 
best to hurt you.” 

“ What do you mean?” 

' “ She has gone ofi with that audacious scamp. ” 

“ Major Swan wick?” 

“ Yes. Did you suspect anything?” 

“ I thought there was an understanding between them.” 

“ They went off together early this morning; walked five 
miles to the station, leaving their luggage to be looked after by 
their servants, who had received their instructions, and who 
got everything packed and off by the one-o’clock train for 
London. I got this telegram late in the' afternoon from. Salis- 
bury.” She handed him a telegram, which he read slowly, 
word by word, and 'then he slowly folded it and restored it to 
his visitor, in heart-stricken silence. 

“ Major Swan wick and I were married at two o’clock, be- 
fore the Registrar. We start for Monte Carlo to-night. 
Please break it to Harrington, and forgive me for going away 
without telling you. We thought it better to dispense with 
all fuss. Yours, lovingly, 

“ Juliet Swakwick.” 

“ God help this infatuated girl!” said Lady Burdenshaw. 
“ She has married a scoundrel without a penny. He behaved 
brutally to his first wife, and he is not very likely to treat this 
one any better. I’m very sorry I ever had them in my house 
together. He was an old flame, and he had lost her more than 
one good match by his equivocal attentions. As for you, my 


244 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


dear yonng fellow, I congratulate you upon a very lucky 
escape. 

Harrington put his hand before his eyes to hide the tears of 
mortification and wounded love. Yet, even while the sense of 
disappointment was keenest, he had a feeling that Lady Bur- 
denshaw was right, and that he had escaped a life-long martyr- 
dom. How could he, with his limited means, have ever satis- 
fied a woman who lived only for pleasure and excitement, dress 
and dissipation? Juliet had been very frank with him during 
their brief courtship, and he had seen enough of her character 
to known that this splendid creature was not of the stuff that 
makes a good wife for a professional man with his struggles 
all before him. He was sorry, he was angry, he was wounded 
to the quick; but in the midst of it all he felt that there was 
a burden lifted off his mind and off his life — that he could 
breathe more freely, that he was no longer overweighted in 
the race. 

Lady Burdenshaw stopped with him for an hour, and told 
him a good many small facts to his charmer^s discredit, al- 
though he begged her more than once to desist. It was her 
only idea of comforting him, and it may be that her efforts 
were not misdirected. 

He was surprised on the following afternoon by a visit from 
his father, who was not satisfied with Lady Burdenshaw ^s re- 
port of his condition. Touched by this evidence of paternal 
affection, the young man took heart of grace and made a full 
confession — first of his engagement, and next of his pecuniary 
obligations — the acceptance so soon to fall due, the twenty 
pounds borrowed front Hayfield. 

“ I can pay that very easily out of my allowance, he said. 
“ 1 only tell you about it to show what a mean hound I was 
becoming. 

“You were very hard driven, my poor boy. You had been 
unlucky enough to fall in love with an unprincipled woman. 
You may thank Providence for having escaped a life of misery. 
Such an alliance as that would have wrecked your future. I 
would rather you married a house-maid with a good character 
than such a woman as J uliet Baldwin. However, there are 
plenty of nice girls in your own sphere, thank God, and plenty 
of pretty girls with unblemished character and antecedents.'’^ 

Harrington went back to Dorchester with his father next 
day, and the acceptance was promptly honored when it was 
presented at the house in Cornhill. 

Sir Henry had discounted it at the local bank almost im- 
mediately after it passed into his possession, and the bank had 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


245 


regarded the document as good value for their money, Matthew 
Dalbrook being very unlikely to allow his son^s signature to 
be dishonored. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

All the spring-time of his love 
Is already gone and past.” 

Theodoee went back to wintery London before the year 
was a week old. He settled himself by his lonely fireside, in 
the silence of his old-fashioned rooms,, A-11 he had of the 
beauty of this world was a glimpse of the river athwart the 
heavy gray mists of a London morning, or the lamps on the 
Embankment shining like a string of jewels in the evening 
dusk. There were days of sullen, hopeless fog, when even 
these things were hidden from him, and when it was hard 
work to keep that stealthy, penetrating grayness and damp 
cold out of his rooms. 

He had brought a fox-terrier from Dorchester, on his return 
from his holiday, an old favorite that had seen the best days 
of her youth, and was better able to put up with a sedentary 
life, varied only by an occasional run, than a younger animal 
would have been. This, faithful friend, an animated little 
beast even at this mature stage of her existence, lightened the 
burden of his loneliness, were it only by leaping onto his knees 
twenty times in five minutes, and only desisting therefrom 
upon most serious remonstrance. . It was pleasant to him to 
have something that loved him, even this irrepressible Miss 
Xipper, with her sidelong grin of affectionate greeting, and 
her unconquerable suspicion of rats behind the wainscot. He 
felt less like Dr. Faustus on that famous Easter morning, when 
the emptiness of life and learning came, home to the lonely 
student with such desolating intensity, when even a devil was 
welcome who could o§er escape from that dull burden of ex- ' 
istence. 

He had come back from his brief holiday dejected and dis- 
heartened. It seemed to him that she who was his loadstar 
was more remote from him than she had ever been— more and 
more remote — vanishing into a distant world where it was 
vain for him to follow. He had failed in the task that she had 
imposed upon him. He was no nearer the solution of that 
dark mystery which troubled her life than he had been when 
he first promised to help her. How poor and impotent a creat- 
ure he must appear in her eyes! His only discoveries had been 
nefi-ative. All that his keen, trained intellect, sharpened by 


246 THE HAY WILL COME. ^ 

seven years of legal experience, had been able to do was to 
prove the unsoundness of her own theory. He had started no 
theory upon his part. Ho flash of genius had illumined the 
obspurity which surrounded Godfrey CarmichaeFs death. 

He went on with his plodding work, resolutely bent upon 
doing the utmost that patient labor can do to insure success. 
Even if it were all vain and futile — that hope of winning 
favor in her eyes — the mere possibility of standing better with 
her, of showing her that he was of the stuff which goes to the 
making of distinguished men — even this was worth working 
for. 

‘‘ She may have great offers by and by,^^ he told himself, 
recalling what Lord Cheriton had said about his daughter's 
chances. “ With her beauty and her expectations, to say 
nothing of her present means, she is sure of distinguished ad- 
mirers; but at the worst she can not look down upon a man 
who is on the road to success in her father’s profession.” 

This ever-present consideration, joined to his very real love 
of his calling, sweetened all that was dry and dull in the initial 
stages of a barrister’s career. While other men of his age 
were spending their evenings at the Gaiety Theater, seeing the 
same burlesque and laugMng at the same jokes night after 
night, as appetite grew with what it fed on, Theodore was con- 
tent to sit in chambers and read law. It was not that he was 
wanting in appreciation of the drama. There was no man in 
London better able to enjoy the dignity of Hamlet at the 
Lyceum, or the rollicking fun of the Gaiety Bluebeard. He 
was no pedantic piece of clay, proud of the dullness that calls 
itself virtue. He was only an earnest and dogged worker, bent 
upon a given result, and able to put aside every hinderance 
upon the road that he was traveling. 

“ They that run in a race run all, but one obtaineth the 
prize,” he said to himself, recalling a sentence in an epistle 
that he had learned years ago at his mother’s knee, words that 
always brought back the cold brightness of early spring, and a 
period of extra church services, long sermons in the lamplit 
church, and the voices of strange preachers, a time of daffo- 
dils and fish dinners, and- much talk of High and Low 
Church. He had never faltered in his religious convictions; 
yet in the days of his youth that Lenten season in a country 
town, that recurrent sound of church-bells in the chilly March 
twilight, had weighed heavy upon his soul. 

Almost the only recreation which he allowed himself in this 
winter season was an occasional attendance at Miss' Newton’s 
tea-parties. He had secured acceptance for himself at these 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


entertainments on the strength of his reading, and he was now 
established as a Shakespearean reader; Miss Newton having 
taken it into her head that Shakespeare is of all great poets the 
easiest understood by the people, and having ordered him to 
read Shakespeare only until she should tell him to desist. 

“ I know what they like and what they dislike, she said.' 
“ Theyfll not conceal their feelings from me when we talk 
you over after you’ve gone. As soon as ever I find them get- 
ting tired I’ll let you know.” 

He began with “ Macbeth,” a story which caught them at 
the very first page. The witches took their breath away; and 
when he came to the murder scene they were all sitting round 
him with their hair seemingly on end. He closed his first, 
reading with that awful knocking at the gate; that one su- 
preme stage effect which has never yet been paralleled by mor- 
tal dramatist. There were some of the girls who tumbled off 
their chairs and groveled on the floor in their excitement. 
There were others who wanted to know the fate of Macbeth 
and his wife on the instant. 

“ I do hope they were both hanged, like the Mannings,” 
said a meek widow. 

‘‘ Oh, but Ae wasn’t so much to blame, Mrs. Pilby. That 
wicked woman drove him to it.” 

So did Mrs. Manning,” argued a BermondseyTady, “ but 
they hanged Manning all the same when they caught him. I 
was a child when it happened, but I remember hearing about 
them. He was took in , Jersey, and she wore a black satin 
gown.” 

“ Oh, don’t talk about your Mannings, Mrs. Hodge. They 
were low, vulgar people. These were a king and queen in a 
palace. It’s all different. It lifts one up out of one’s own 
life only to hear about them. You may read about murders 
in the newspapers till your eyes begin to swim^ but you won’t 
feel like that. I don’t know when I’ve felt so sorry for any- 
body as I feel for King Macbeth.” 

Marian sat silent, and refrained from all part in the chorus 
of criticism, but she moved to the piano presently and began^ 
to play a Scotch air—a grand old march — slow, solemn music 
that was almost too much for the nerves of the more excitable 
among Miss Newton’s party. She glided from one medley to 
another, and she played those wild Scottish airs -with such 
thrilling power that they seemed to sustain and intensify the 
uncanny effect of the tragic reading. 

Theodore went over to the piano and stood beside her as she 
played. 


248 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


\ 

“ I knew you were a musician/^ he said^ “ though I never 
heard you touch the keys till to-night. ” 

“ How did you know?^^ 

My cousin Juanita told me. She remembered your play- 
ing in her mother^s room when she was a child/^ 

The woman called Marian lifted her eyes to him with a look 
of patient reproach, as if she said, You are cruel to hit any 
one so helpless as I am,^^ and then, playing all the time, she 
answered, coldly: 

“ I do not know what you are talking about. 

“ Don^t you? Oh, but indeed I think you do, and I should 
be very glad to be of use to you if you would let me, for the 
sake of those old days. I donT think it is possible I can be 
mistaken, though you may have your own reason for refusing 
to confide in me."’"’ 

He was certain now in his own mind that this was Mercy 
Porter and no other. That fine touch upon the piano im- 
plied sustained and careful cultivation. She did not play hke 
a girl who had learned music as an after-thought. 

He left the house when she did, and walked part of the way 
to Hercules Buildings with her, but did not offer to go out of 
his way to see her home, being very sure she would refuse. 

“ I wish you would trust me,-’"’ he said, gently, as they 
walked side by side, without looking at each other. Believe 
me that every one at Cheriton is sorry for you. If you were 
to go back to the neighborhood you would have everybody's 
sympathy. There would be no one io cast a stone. 

“ 1 am very sorry I ever mentioned Cheriton to you, Mr. 
Dalbrook,-’^ she said, impatiently. ' “It was a foolish impulse 
that made me talk. You insist upon making guesses. You 
try to force a confession from me. It is hardly generous. 

“ My interest in you must be my excuse.-’^ 

“You can do me no good by that kind of interest. I shall 
never see Dorsetshire again; so what can it matter who I- was 
when I lived in that part of the world? There are hundreds 
of women in London as lonely as I am — hundreds — perhaps 
thousands — who have broken every link with their past. My 
life suits me well enough, and I am contented. I shall never 
try to change it. 

“ That is a pity. You are young enough to make a good 
wife to an honest man, to help in creating a happy home.^"' 

“ Am I? I feel a century old; and I have done with every 
thought of love or marriage. When I woke to consciousness 
after that dreadful fever, awoke from darkness and oblivion 
like that of the grave, I entered upon a new life. I came out 


th:e day will come. 


249 


of that sickness like one who had passed through hell. Pas- 
sion and hope, and youth and good looks, had been burned out 
of me in a fiery furnace. It was a wonder to myself that my 
body was alive. It was no wonder to me that my heart was 
dead. From that time I have lived very much as I am living 
now — after a brief time of struggle and starvation — and the 
life suits me fairly well. I shall never seek to better it. 

“ That is hard, Marian. 

He called her by her Christian name, frankly, in almost 
paternal friendliness, not knowing any other name by which to 
call her. He was with Miss Newton earlier than usual on the 
occasion of her next tea-drinking, ‘So early as to be before any- 
body else, and he talked to his hostess about Marian — Marian 
Gray, Miss Newton called her — confiding to her his conviction 
that this young woman was no other than Mrs. Porter^’s miss- 
ing daughter. He told her of his interview with Mrs. Porter, 
and of the mother^s angry repudiation of her child. 

“ I can but think that her hardness was assumed, he said, 
“ and that the ice would melt at a touch if the mother and 
daughter could be brought together. I should like to try the 
experiment. 

“It is hardly wise to try experiments with human hearts,^’ 
said Miss Newton. “ Marian is contented and at peace, if not 
happy. To force her back upon a mother who might be hard 
and bitter to her — do you think that would be true kind- 
ness 

“ What if the mother^ s heart has been yearning for her lost 
lamb in all these years, and by bringing her back I might 
make two lives happy 

“ Let the mother come to the child. Let her who has 
something to forgive be the one to make the advance. It is 
so hard for the sinner to go back. She must be helped back. 
If the mother were a woman with a motherly heart she would 
have been searching for her lost child in all those years instead 
of wrapping herself up in her sorrow at home.^^ 

“ I own 1 have thought that.^^ 

“ Of course you have. You canT think otherwise as a sen- 
.sible man. I have -no patience -with such a mother. As for 
Marian, I think she may yet get •n very well as she is. I am 
fond of her, and I believe she is fond of me. She earns from 
twelve to fourteen shillings a week. She pays five shillings for 
her room, and she live§ upon eightpence a day. I neednT tell 
you that the tea-pot is her piece de resistance. Her most sub- 
stantial meal on some days consists of a couple of scones from 
the Scotch baker's, or a penny loaf and a hard-boiled egg; but 


250 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


when I go to see her she gives me an admirable cup of tea, 
and positively delicious bread and butter. Her room is the 
very pink and pattern of neatness. All the instincts of a lady 
show themselves in that poor little two-pair back.^ She has 
curtained the iron bedstead and the window with white dimity, 
which is always clean and fresh, for she washes and u’ons it 
with her own hands. She generally contrives to have a bunch 
of flowers upon her work-table, and hard as she works, her 
room is always free from litter. She has about half a dozen 
books of her own upon the mantel-shelf, her Bible, Milton, 
Shakespeare, Charles Lamb’s Essays, Goldsmith’s poems, and 
the ‘ Idyls of the King ’ — well-worn volumes, which have been 
her com^panions for years. She borrows other books from the 
Free Library, and her mind is always being cultivated. ^ I 
really believe she is happy. She is one of those rare individ- 
uals who can afford to live alone. Do not disturb her lightly. ” 

“You are right, perhaps. The mother struck me as by no 
means a pleasant character, always supposing that Mrs. Porter 
is her mother, of which I myself have very little doubt.” 

Theodore made no further effort to bring mother and daugh- 
ter together, but he met Marian from time to time at Miss 
Newton’s tea-parties, and acquaintance ripened into friend- 
ship. Her refinement and her very real musical talent sus- 
tained his interest in her. He talked to her of books some- 
times when they happened to be sitting side by side at the 
tea-table, and he was surprised at the extent of her reading. 
She confessed when he questioned her that she was in the 
habit of stealing two or three hours from the night for her 
books. 

“ I find that I can do with a few hours’ sleep,” she said, 
“if I lie down happy in my mind after being absorbed in a 
delightful book. My books are my life. They give me the 
whole universe for my world, though I have to live in one 
room, and to follow a very monotonous calling. ” 

He admired the refinement of that purely intellectual nat- 
ure, but he admired still more that admirable tact which regu- 
lated her intercourse with Miss Newton’s homelier friends. 
Never by word or tone or half-involuntary glance did Marian 
betray any consciousness of superiority to the uncultivated 
herd. She shared their interests, she sympathized with their 
vexations, she neither smiled nor shuddered at cockney twang 
or missing aspirate. , 

Winter brightened into spring, with all its varieties of good 
and evil; east winds rushing round street-corners, and cutting 
into the pedestrian like a knife; west winds infolding him like 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


251 


a balmy caress, and bringing the perfume of violets, the vivid 
yellow of dalfodils into the wilderness of brick and stone; 
rainy days, gray, monotonous, dismal, hanging on the soul 
like a curtain of gloom and hopelessness. These made up the 
sum of Theodore^s outer life. Within he had his, books, his 
ambition, and his faithful love. He told himself that it was a 
hopeless love; but there aye many things which a man tells 
himself, and tries to believe, and yet does not believe. The 
very human longing for blessedness is too strong for human 
wisdom. Where there is love there is always hope. 

He had grown accustomed to his life in chambers; and 
albeit he was very much attached to his father, and was ami- . 
ably tolerant of his brother and sisters, he could but feel that 
this solitary existence better suited his temper than residence 
in a family circle. At Dorchester .it had been very difficult 
for him to be alone. Out of business hours his sisters con- 
sidered that they had a claim upon him, a right to waste his 
life in the most trivial amusements and engagements. If he 
withdrew himself irom their society, and that of their numer- 
ous dearest friends, they accused him of grumpiness, and 
thought themselves ill treated. ^He had chafed against the 
waste of life, the utter futility of those engagements which 
prevented his keeping level with the intellectual growth of 
the age. He felt that his youth was slipping from under him, 
leaving him stationary, when every pulse of his being beat im- 
patiently for pro^r^ss. And now it was pleasant to him to be 
his own master, free to make the best possible use of his days. 
He found a few friends in London whose society suited him, , 
and only a few. Among these the man of whom he saw most 
was Outhbert Ramsay, a young Scotchman, who had 4been 
his chief companion at Cambridge, who had studied medicine 
for three years in Leipsic and Paris with ^Ludwig and Pasteur, 
and who was now at St. Thomases. The two young men ran 
up against each other in that main artery of London life, the 
Strand,' in the January twilight, and renewed the friendly 
intimacy of that by-gone time when Ramsay had been at 
Trinity and Dalbrook at Trinity Hall. They dined together 
at a restaurant on the evening of that first meeting, and Theo- 
dore took his friend to his chambers after dinner, where the 
two sat late into the night talking over college reminiscences 
of hall and river. 

Outhbert Ramsay had been one of the most remarkable un- 
der-graduates of those days, notable alike for mental and 
physical gifts which lifted him out of the ruck. He was six 
feet two; with the form of an athlete, as handsome a face as 


252 THE DAY WILL COME. 

was ever seen within the gates of Trinity; and these advan- 
tages of person, which would have been noteworthy in any man, 
were the more remarkable in him, because of his utter indiffer- 
ence to them, or, perhaps, it may be said, complete uncon- 
sciousness of them. He knew that he was a big man, because 
his tailor told him as much; but he had never taken into con- 
sideration the question as to whet];ier he was or was not a hand- 
some man; indeed, except when he had his hair cut — an opera- 
tion which he always submitted to unwillingly and of dire 
necessity — it it is doubtful if he ever looked into a glass long 
enough to know what manner of man he was; certainly not 
at his morning toilet, when he moved restlessly about the 
room, hair-brushes in hand, belaboring his handsome head, 
and exercising his extraordinary memory by the repetition of 
some scientific formula acquired during the previous night^s 
reading. 

His own estimate of his appearance was comprised in the 
idea that he was very Scotch. That milky whiteness of 
complexion, touched with just enough ruddy color to give life 
to the face, those brilliant blue eyes, the straight nose, clear- 
cut nostrils, firm lips and firmer chin, 4he high broad brow, 
and light auburn hair, constituted to his mind nothing more 
than his brevet of nationality. 

No one would ever take me for anything but a Scotch- 
man,^^ he would say, lightly, if any acquaintance ventured to 
hint at his good looks. “ There^s no mistake about me. Al- 
bion is written on my brow.’’ ^ 

From his childhood upward he had cared only for large 
things — intent upon investigation and discovery from the time 
heidould crawl — asking the most searching questions of mother 
and of nurse — prying into those abstract mysteries which per- 
plex philosophers before he could speak plain. The thirst for 
knowledge had grown with his growth and strengthened with 
his strength. His hardy boyhood had been spent for the most 
part in the broad windy streets of Aberdeen, marching with 
swinging stride along that granite pavement, his shabby red 
gown flapping in the north-easter; faring anyhow, as indiffer- 
ent to what he eat as he was to what he wore, ahead of his fel- 
lows in all things intellectual, and abreast with the best athletes 
of his year in the sports they valued, a king among men, and 
of such a happy disposition that nothing in life came amiss to 
him, and what would have been hardship to another seemed 
sport to him. 

Some one, a wealthy member of his extensive family, found 
out that this Cuthbert was no common youth, and that with a 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


253 


little encouragement he might do honor to the clan. This dis- 
tant kinsman, one of the heads of the great house of Ramsay, 
sent him to Cambridge, where he entered as a scholar of his 
college, and at the end of a year gained a university scholar- 
ship, which made him independent. This hardy youth from 
the city of Bon Accord was able to live upon so little — could 
not for the life of him have been extravagant, having none of 
that mollesse, or soft self-indulgence, w'hioh is at the root of 
most men^s squanderings. He was nine-and-twenty years of 
age, and he had never worn a gardenia, and had only had one 
suit of dress-clothes since he grew to man^s estate. Needless 
to say that albeit he went out very seldom, that suit was now 
somewhat shabby; but Cuthbert^s superb appearance neutral- 
ized the shabbiness, and he looked the finest man in any assem- 
bly. His parents were in their graves before he left the uni- 
versity. He had no ties. He was as free as Adam would have 
been if^Eve had never been created. There was no one near 
or dear to him to feel proud of his honors, though his name 
was high in the list of Wranglers, and he had taken a first 
class in science. And now, after that interval of serious scien- 
tific work in Leipsic and Paris, he was plodding at St. Thomases 
with a view to a London degree, and thus the two hard-work- 
ing young men, very intimate in the. old days when Cuthbert^s 
rooms in the Bishop Hostel were conveniently adjacent to 
Theodore^s ground-floor in Trinity Hall, were thrown together 
again upon their life-journey, and were honestly glad to renew 
the old friendship. 

Ramsay was delighted with his friend^s chambers. 

“ I was afraid there was nothing so good as this left in the 
Temple, he said, rapturously contemplating the blackened 
old wainscot and the low ceiling with its heavy cross-beam. 

“ I thought smartness and brand-new stone had superseded all 
that was historical and interesting within the precincts of the 
Lamb. But these rooms of yours have the true smack. Why, 

1 really believe now, Dalbrook, you must have rats behind that 
wainscot 

‘‘ 1 had, till Miss Nipper came to keep me company, an- 
swered Theodore, patting the terrier, whose neat little head 
and intelligent ears were lifted at the sound of her name. 

“ And Nipper has made them emigrate to the next house, 
no doubt?^' 

I am glad you like my rooms, Cuthbert.^^ 

‘‘ Like them! I envy you the ownership more than I can ' 
say. If anything can make me sorry that I am n6t a lawyer 
it would be the fact that I canT live in the Temple. We doc- 


254 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


tors have no distinctive abode, nothing associated with the 
past.’^ 

‘‘ Perhaps that is because medicine is essentially a progress- 
ive science, 

“Is it? Sometimes I begin to doubt if it has made any 
progress since Galen — or Albertus Magnus. I will admit that 
there was progress of some kind up to his time.-’^ 

“ This house has an interest for me that it would have for 
no one else, said Theodore, presently, while his friend filled 
his brier- wood. “ My kinsman. Lord Cheriton, occupied the 
rooms underneath these for about a dozen years; and it is a 
fancy of mine to keep his image before me as I sit here alone 
with my books. It reminds me of what a man can do,in the 
profession which so many of my friends assure me is hopeless. 

“ No one knows anything about it, Theodore. If you went 
into statistics you would find that the chances of success in the 
learned professions are pretty nearly equal. So mamy men 
will get on, and so many will fail, at every trade, in qvery call- 
ing. The faculty of success lies in the man himself. I always 
thought you were the kind of man to do well in whatever line 
you hit upon. A calm, clear brain and a resolute will are the 
first factors in the sum of life. And so Lord Cheriton lived in 
this house, did he? I have heard people talk of him as a very 
distinguished man, as well as a very lucky one. By the bye, 
it was in his house that strange murder occurred last year. 

“ Yes, it was in his house, and it was his daughter’s husband 
who was murdered.” 

“ Tell me the story, Theodore,” said Ramsay, leaning back 
his handsome head, and half closing his eyes, with the air of 
a man who liked hearing about mui'ders. “ I read the ac- 
count in the papers at the time, but I’ve very nearly forgotten 
all about it. ” 

Theodore complied, and gave his friend the history of the 
case, and the failure of professional acumen. 

“ And there has been nothing discovered since last sum- 
mer?” 

“Nothing!” 

“ That is rather hard upon Lord Cheriton, bearing in mind 
your detective’s suggestion of a vendetta. The vendetta would 
not be likely to close with the death of Sir Godfrey Carmichael. 
Hatred would demand further victims —Lord Cheriton himself 
perhaps, or this lovely young widow; but there could hardly 
be such vindictive feeling without a strong cause. Enmity so 
deadly must have had a beginning in. a profound sense of 
wrong. 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


255 


I have studied the case from that point of view, but can 
discover no cause for such malignity. 1 have almost given up 
all hope of unraveling the mystery.-’^ 

“ And your kinsman is to live under the sword of Damocles 
for the rest of his life. Dpon my soul I pity him. I can im- 
agine nothing in Ireland worse than the murder of Sir God- 
frey Carmichael — a man seated peacefully in his own drawing- 
room, and a high-principled, amiable young man, you tell 
me, who never was known to wrong a living creature. 

Theodore Dalbrook did not spend his Easter holidays in Dor- 
setshire. He had heard from his sisters that Juanita was 
staying at Swanage with Lady Jane Carmichael. He was un- 
willing to intrude upon her there, and he had nothing to com- 
municate as to that all-absorbing subject which was at present 
his only claim upon her interest. Under these circumstances 
he was easily persuaded to spend his vacation in a ten days'’ 
trip to Holland with Cuthbert Ramsay, who was keenly inter- 
ested in the result of some experiments which had lately been 
made at Leyden; and thus it happened that Theodore let some 
time go by without seeing any member of his family except 
his father, who came to London occasionally upon business, 
and whom his son was delighted to entertain and make much 
of in his chambers or at his club, the serviceable Constitutional. 

Toward the end of April he read an announcement in the 
papers which had touched him almost to tears: 

“On the 23d inst., at Milbrook Priory, the widow of Sir 
Godfrey Carmichael of a posthumous son.^^ 

He was thankf al for her sake that this new interest had been 
given to her life — that a new and fair horizon was open to her 
in this young life with all its possibilities of love and gladness. 
It might be that the coming of this child would change the 
current of her thoughts, that the stern desire for retribution 
would grow less keen, that the agonizing sense of loss would 
be softened almost to forgetfulness. He remembered those 
lovely lines of the poet philosopher's. 

This child came, he hoped, freighted with healing and com- 
fort, came like the glad spring-time itself, like Adonis or Per- 
sephone, with his arms full of flowers. 

He wrote to his cousin, in tenderest congratulation, a letter 
breathing a generous and pure aflection, without one selfish 
thought lurking between the lines. 

Her answer came after nearly a month’s delay, but, although 
tardy, it was most delightful to him. Juanita asked him to 




^56 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


be godfather to her boy, and he could easily imagine that this 
was the highest honor she could confer upon him. 

“ In London half the young men I used to meet took a pride 
in avowing their unbelief/^ she wrote, “ but I know that you 
are not ashamed to acknowledge your faith in Christ and His 
Church. I shall feel secure that what you promise for niy 
child will be fulfilled, so far as it is in your power to bring 
about its fulfillment. I know that if you stand beside the font 
and take those vows in his name you will not remember that 
ceremony as an empty form, a mere concession to usage and 
respectability. Those promises will appeal to you for my 
fatherless cMld in the days to come. They will make you his 
friend and protector. 

He accepted the trust with greater gladness than he had felt 
about anything that had happened to him for a long time, and 
on a balmy morning in the last week of May he found himself 
standing by the font of the old Saxon church at Milbrook, 
where he had heard the solemn words of the burial service read 
above Sir Godfrey CarmichaeTs coffin less than a year before. 
He took upon himself the custody of the infantas conscience in 
all good faith, and he felt that this trust which his cousin had 
given to him made a new link between them. 

The Grenvilles had come down from town to be present at 
the ceremony, though neither husband nor wife was officially 
concerned in it. Mrs. Grenville had seized the opportunity to 
bring Johnnie and Godolphin to Dorsetshire for change<.of air. 
She had an idea that the Purbeck air had a particularly re- 
vivifying effect upon them, like unto no other air. 

“ I suppose that is because it is my native air,^^ she ex- 
plained. 

Mr. Grenville submitted to his nephew^s existence as a mys- 
terious dispensation of Providence, which it became him to en- 
dure with gentleman-like fortitude, but he did not cease to 
regard a posthumous infant as a solecism in nature and so- 
ciety. 

“ Your sister-in-law actually seems pleased with her baby,^^ 
he told his wife, grumblingly, as he put on a frock-coat in 
honor of the approaching cefemony; “ but it appears to me 
that a woman of refined feeling would be impressed with a 
’sense of incongruity — of indelicacy even — in the idea of a child 
born such ages after the father^s death — a sort of no-man’s- 
baby, as it were. And upon my word it is uncommonly hard 
upon Johnnie. With such a family as ours — six, and the 
possibilities of the future— it would have been a grand thing 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


257 


to have one well provided for. As things stand now they 
must all be paupers. 

Lord Cheriton was Theodore’s fellow-sponsor, and Lady 
Jane was godmother, an office which filled the dear soul with 
rapture. She held her grandchild throughout the service, 
except when she delivered him gingerly to the priest, who at 
one stage of the ceremony carried the new-made Christian 
half-way up the aisle, and, as it were, flaunted him in the face 
of the scanty congregation. 

Juanita stood like a statue while these rites were being cele- 
brated, and in her pale, set face there was none of the tender 
interest which a mother might be expected to show upon such 
an occasion. There was a deep pathos in that marble face and 
those black garments in an hour which has generally some- 
thing of a festal aspect. Strangers thought her cold, a proud,' 
hjard young woman, perhaps, thinking more of her own im- 
portance than of her baby; yet could they have read beneath 
the surface they would have pitied the girl-widow in her deso- 
lation on this day which should have been blessed to her. She 
could but think of him who was not ^ there, of the father who 
had been fated never to look upon his son’s face, of the son 
who was to grow from infancy to manhood without the knowl- 
edge of a father’s love, 

Theodore watched that pale and lovely face, full of sympa- 
thy, but not without wonder. How would this new tie affect 
her.^ he wondered. Would it soften all that was hard and 
vindictive in her mind — would it be strong enough to bring 
about resignation to the will of Heaven — a patient waiting 
upon Providence, instead of that feverish bagerness to exact a 
life for a life? 

They two were alone together for only a few minutes after 
luncheon, strolling along the broad graveled walk in front of 
the dining-room windows, in the afternoon sunshine, while 
Lord Cheriton and Mr. Grenville lingered over coffee and 
cigars, and Lady Jane and her daughter made a domestic 
group with children and nurses under a gigantic Japanese um- 
brella. Short as tete-a-Ute was, it convinced Theodore 
that the child had not brought oblivion of the father’s fate. 

“You have heard nothing more — made no new discovery, 
suppose?” Juanita said, nervously. 

“ Nothing. Indeed, Juanita, I fear I have no talent as an 
amateur detective. I am not likely to succeed where Mr. 
Churton failed. It was easy enough for me to complete the 
record of the Strangways — to set your suspicions at rest with 

9 


25S 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


regard to them. That was plain sailing. But it seems to me 
I shall never go any further. 

“ I^’m afraid you will not/’ she said, wearily; “ and yet I 
had such hope in your cleverness, your determination to help 
me. As a lawyer you would know how to set about it. The 
London detective has many cases; his mind travels from one 
to another. He has no leisure to think deeply about anything; 
but you, who have had so much leisure of late — you would, I 
know, be glad to help me. ” 

“ Glad! Good God, Juanita, you must know that 1 would 
cut off my hand to give you ease or comfort — respite even from 
a passing trouble. And if you are really set upon this thing 
— if your peace is really dependent upon the discovery of your 
husband’s murderer— 7 ” 

“ It is, it is, Theodore. I can not know rest or comfort 
'While his death remains unpunished. 1 can not lie down in 
peace at night while I know that the wretch who killed him is 
walking about, rejoicing in his wickedness, glad to have de- 
stroyed that blameless life, laughing at our paltry love which 
can not let our dead go unavenged. ” 

If cudgeling these poor brains of mine could brmg me any 
nearer to the truth, J uanita, ” Theodore said, with a troubled 
sigh, “ I should have helped you better; but so far I can see 
no ray of light in the thick darkness. I do not think any 
efforts of ours will solve the mystery. Only some accident, 
some inconceivable imprudence on the part of the murderer, 
can put us on his track. ” 

And then he thought with horror of Eamsay’s idea that a 
hatred so malignant as that which had killed Godfrey Car- 
michael might reveal itself in some new crime. He thought 
of the young mother bending over her infant’s cradle in some 
unguarded room — calm in the fancied safety of her English 
home. He thought of her wandering alone in park or wood, 
while that rabid hatred lurked in the shadow waiting and 
watching for the moment of attack. The horror of the idea 
chilled him to the heart, but he was careful not to hint at that 
horror to J uanita. He seized the first opportunity of being 
alone with Lady Jane and imparted his fears, founded upon 
that suggestion of Cuthbert Eamsay’s, to her. The kind 
creature was quick to take alarm, and promised to see that 
J uanita was guarded at all hours by all precautions that could 
be taken without alarming her. 

‘‘She is surrounded with old and faithful servants,” said 
Lady Jane; “ a hint to them will put them on their guard; 
but if you thought it wiser I would take her away from tliis 


IrHE i)AY WILL COME.’ 


2 ^^ 

place — take her away from England, if necessary. It is hor- 
rible to think of living at the mercy of an unknown foe.^^ 

“ My friend^s notion may be groundless. The crime of 
last year may have been an isolated act — the inspiration of 
madness. In our efforts to account for the unaccountable we 
may invent theories which torture us, and which may yet have 
no ground in fact. Only it is as well to think of possibilities,, 
however hideous. 

He spent one night at the Priory, and before departure next, 
morning presented his offering of a fine George the Second 
mug to his godson, Godfrey James Dalbrook — who in his pres- 
ent stage of existence seemed to his godfather a scarcely dis- 
tinguishable morsel of humanity smothered in overmuch cam- 
bric and Valenciennes. 

‘‘ I^m afraid if I were to meet my godson in the arms of a 
strange nurse, 1 should not know him,^^ he said, deprecating- 
ly, after he had kissed the rosebud mouth, “ but please God 
the time will come when he and I will be firm friends. As 
soon as he is old enough to decline mensa I shall feel that we 
can converse upon a common footing, and when he goes to 
Eton I shall renew my youth every time I run down to waste 
an hour in the playing fields watching him at cricket, or to 
drive him to the White Hart.^^ 

Although he put on an air of cheerfulness in his leave-tak- 
ing, he left the Priory with a sense of deepest anxiety; and it 
was almost a relief to him when he received a letter from Lady 
Jane a week afterward. 

, “ I could not get over the uneasy feeling which your sug- 
gestion awakened, she wrote, so I am going to carry off 
mother and child to Switzerland the day after to-morrow. In- 
terlachen and Grind el wald are delightful at this season. We 
shall return to Dorsetshire as soon as the tourists begin to in- 
vade our retreat, and I trust in God that some discovery may 
be made in the meantime, so that all our minds may be more 
at ease. 


GHAPTEE XIX. 

“ Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, 

That time will come and take my love away. 

This thought. is as a death, which can not choose 
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.” 

That ghastly idea mooted by Cuthbert Ramsay haunted 
Theodore, the idea of an unsatisfied hatred still hovering like 
a bird of prey over the heads of J uanita and her child, ready 


260 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


to make its deadly swoop in the hour that should see her most 
helpless and unprotected — a malignity forever on the watch, a 
vengeance not satiated but only whetted. The horror of this 
possibility gave a new impetus to Theodore^s mind, and he set 
himself again to the apparently hopeless endeavor to find the 
motive of the murder and the person of the murderer. 

As an initial step he invited Mr. Churton to dine with him 
at his chambers, entertained that gentleman with a well-chosen 
little dinner sent in from a famous tavern in the Strand, and 
a bottle of unexceptionable port after dinner; and by this in- 
nocent means got the detective into an expansive frame of 
mind, and induced him to discuss the Cheriton murder in all 
its bearings. 

The result of the long evening’s talk differed in hardly any 
point from the opinion which Mr. Churton had formulated at 
Cheriton. The motive of the murder must be looked for in 
some past wrong, or fancied wrong, inflicted upon the mur- 
derer. It was a' kind of murder familiar enough among Celtic 
nations, but very uncommon in England. And again Mr. 
Churton returned to his point that there was a woman at the 
bottom of it. 

Do you mean that a woman fired the shot?” 

Decidedly not. I mean that a woman was the motive 
power. Women are not given to avenging their wrongs with 
their own hands. They will instigate the men who love them 
to desperate crimes — unconsciously perhaps — for they are the 
first to howl when the crime has been committed and the 
lover’s neck is in danger. But jealousy is the most powerful 
factor of all, and I take it jealousy was at the bottom of the 
Cheriton crime — some intrigue of Sir Godfrey’s youth. ” 

“ Strange as you may consider sneh a belief, Mr. Churton, 
I am inclined to think that Sir Godfrey’s youth was innocent 
of intrigues — that he never loved any woman except my cousin, 
whom he adored from the time he was eighteen, when she was 
a lovely child of eleven. It was a very romantic attachment, 
and the kind of attachment which keeps a man out of danger 
from low temptations.” 

“You and Lord Cheriton tell me the same story, sir,” said 
the detective, with a touch of impatience; “ but if this im- 
maculate young man never injured anybody, how do you ac- 
count for that bullet?” 

“ It is unaccountable, except upon a far-fetched hvpothesis. ” 

“ What may that be?” 

“ That the act of vengeance, though striking Godfrey Car- 
michael, was aimed at Lord Cheriton — that the blow was 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


261 


meant to ruin his daughter's life, and by ricochetting strike 
him to the heart. 1 think we have spoken of this possibility be- 
fore to-night.” 

After that evening with Churton, Theodore made up his 
mind that there was no assistance to be looked for from this 
quarter. The detective had exhausted his means of investiga- 
tion, and had nothing Mrther to suggest. He was too prac- 
tical a man to waste time or thought upon speculative theories. 
Theodore saw, therefore, that if he were to pursue the subject 
further he must think and work for himself. 

After considering the question from every possible point of 
view, he became the more established, in ihe idea that Godfrey 
Carmichael had been the scapegoat of another man^s sin, the 
vicarious victim whose death was to strike at a guilty life. Of 
his youth it was easy to know all that there was to be known. 
He had lived in the sight of his fellow-men, a young man of 
too much social importance to be able to hide any youthful in ■ 
discretions or wrong-doing. But what of that other and so 
much longer life? What of the early struggles of the self- 
made man? What of the history of James Dalbrook in those 
long years of bachelor life in London, when he was slowly 
working his way to the front? Might not there have been 
some hidden sin in that life, some sin dark enough to awaken 
a sleepless vengeance, a malignity which should descend upon 
him in the day of peace and prosperity like a thunder-bolt 
from a clear and quiet sky? 

A man who marries at forty years of age has generally some 
kind of history before his marriage; and it was in that history 
Theodore told himself that . he must look for a clew to the 
mystery of Godfrey OarmichaeBs death. He was loyal to his 
kinsman and his friend; he was inspired by no prurient curi- 
osity, no petty desire to belittle the great man; he was prompt- 
ed solely by his desire to unearth the secret foe, to provide for 
the safety of Juanita^s future life, to save that beloved head 
from the horror of the impending sword. 

Meditating upon his past intercourse with Lord Cheriton, 
and upon every familiar conversation which he was able to re- 
call, he was surprised to find how very little his kinsman had 
ever related of his- London life before the time when he took , 
silk and married a rich wife. His allusions to that earlier 
period had been of the briefest. He had shown none of that 
egotistical pleasure which most successful men feel in talking 
of their struggles, and the rosy dawn of fame, those first tri- 
umphs, small perhaps in themselves, but the after-taste of 
wloich is sweeter in the mouth than the larger victories of the 


362 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


flood-tide. He had never talked of any affairs of the heart, 
any of those lighter flirtations and unfinished romances which 
most men love to recall. His history, so far as it could be 
judged by his conversation, had been a blank. 

Either the man must have been a legal machine, a cold, 
passionless piece of human clay, carijjg for nothing but pro- 
fessional achievement, in those eighteen years of manhood be- 
tween his call to the Bar and his marriage, or he had lived a 
life which he could not afford to talk about. He was either 
of a duller clay than his fellow-men, or he had a hidden his- 
tory. 

Now, as it was hardly possible that James Dalbrook, judged 
from either a psychological or a physiological standpoint, 
could have been dull and cold, and plodding and passionless, 
at any period of his career, there remained the inference that 
he had a secret history. 

Living under the very roof that had- sheltered his cousin in 
the greater part of his professional career, Theodore Dalbrook 
arrived at this conclusion. What kind of a life had he lived, 
that young barrister, briefless and friendless at the outset, 
whose name was eventually to become a power, 'a weight 
bringing down the legal scale on the side of victory, just as 
Archer’s riding was supposed to secure the winning of a race. 
How had he lived in those early years, when the fight was all 
before him? What friends had he made for himself, and 
what enemies? What love, or what hate, had agitated his 
existence? 

The investigator could only approach the question in the 
most commonplace manner. It was nearly a quarter of a 
century since James Dalbrook had been a tenant of that 
ground-floor set, above which Theodore was pacing up and 
down in the summer dusk. He had to find some one who re- 
membered him at that time. 

It would not be his present laundress, a buxom matron of 
about five-and-thirty, who had never been known to any 
present inhabitant of Ferret Court without the incumbrance 
of a baby in arms, or a baby at^ the breast. As fast as one 
baby was disposed of there was another coming forward to 
take its place. She always brought her baby with her, and 
left it about in obscure corners, like an umbrella. It was al- 
ways of the order of infant designated good; that is to say, it 
was not a squalling baby. There were some of Mrs. Arm- 
strong’s clients who suspected her of keeping it in a semi- 
narcotized condition in the interests of her profession; but 
when this practice was hinted at the matron referred to the 


THE HAT WILL COME. 263 

necessities of teething, and hoped she did not require to be re- 
minded of her duty as a mother. 

This good person brought in the lighted lamp, while Theo- 
dore was pacing up and down the narrow limits of his sitting- 
room. She placed the lamp on the table, looked inquiringly 
at her employer, and then retired, only to return with the tea- 
tray, which she arranged lingeringly. She was a talkative 
person, with an active intellect, and it irked her to leave the 
room without any scrap of conversation, were it only an inquiry 
nbout the postman, or a casual remark upon the weather. 

Nothing being forthcoming from Mr. Dalbrook, she with- 
drew to the door, but paused upon the threshold and dropped 
a courtesy. 

I^m afraid we are going to have a storm to-night, sir,^^ 
she said. 

The fear was a thing of the moment, inspired by her ardent 
desire to talk. 

‘‘ Do you think so, Mr. Armstrong?’^ 

“ I do, indeed, sir. It couldnT be that ^eavy if there wasn^t 
thunder in the air.-’^ 

“ Perhaps not,'’' replied Theodore, indifferently. “ Ah, by 
the way, how long have you looked after these chambers?" 

From three years before I was married, sir. " 

Is that long?" 

“ Lor', yes, sir. I should think it was. Why, my Joseph 
was thirteen on his last birthday." 

‘^ Let me see; that would mean about seventeen years, 
wouldn't it?" 

“ Yes, sir." 

“ And I suppose you knew nothing about the chambers be- 
fore that time?" 

“ I won't say that, sir. I have known them more or less 
ever since I could run alone. Mother looked after them be- 
fore me. It was only when the rheumatics took such firm 
hold of her " — this was as if Theodore were thoroughly posted 
in the case — “ that mother gave up. She had done for the 
gentlemen in this house for over twenty years. Though, when 
she married father she never thought to have to do such work 
as this, he being a master-carpenter and cabinet-maker, with 
a nice business, and she'd been brought up different, and had 
more education than any of us ever had. " 

“ Then your mother must have known this house when Mr. 
James Dalbrook had the ground-fioor — the Mr. Dalbrook who 
is now Lord Oheriton," said Theodore, cutting short this bio- 
graphical matter. 


264 


'taE DAY WILL COME. 


1 should think she did, sir. Many’s the time I’ve heard 
her talk of him. He was just like you, sir, in his ways, as far 
as 1 can gather — very quiet and very studious. She waited 
upon him for nearly twelve years, so she ought to be a judge 
of his character. ” 

“ I should like to have a chat with your mother sonle of 
these days, Mrs. Armstrong.” 

“ Would you, sir? I’m sure she’d be delighted. She loves 
talking over old times. She’s none of your Kadicals, that are 
all for changing things, like my husband. She looks up to 
her superiors, and she feels quite proud of having done for 
Lord Oheriton when he, was just like any other young gentle- 
man in Ferret Court. Any time you’d like to step round to 
our place, sir, mother would be happy to see you. She’d be 
glad to wait upon you, but she’s crippled with the rheumatics, 
and it’s as much as she can do to get upstairs of a night and 
down-stairs of a morning.” 

“ I’ll call upon her to-morrow afternoon, if that will be 
convenient.” 

“No fear of that, sir. Shall I look round at four o’clock 
and show you where she lives, sir? It’s not above five min- 
utes’ walk.” 

“ If you please. I shall be very much obliged. ” 

Gadbolt’s Lane was one of the obscurest alleys between the 
Temple and St. Bride’s Church, but it was as well known in 
the locality as if it had been Kegent Street. Thither Mrs. 
Armstrong conducted her employer on a sultry June after- 
noon, and admitted him with her own private key into one of 
the narrowest houses he had ever seen, a house of three stories, 
with one window in each story, and with a tiny street-door 
squeezed in between the parlor window and the next house — a 
house which, if it had stood alone, would have been a tower. 
Upon the narrow street door appeared a wide brass plate in- 
scribed with the name of “ J. W. Armstrong, Plumber,” and 
in the foreground of the parlor window were exhibited various 
indications of the plumbing trade. On a smaller brass plate, 
just below the knocker, appeared the modest legend, “Miss 
Mobley, Ladies’ own materials made up.” 

The little parlor behind the plumber’s emblems was very 
close and stufiy upon this midsummer afternoon, for Mrs. 
Dugget’s complaint necessitated a fire in season and out of 
season; but it was also spotlessly clean, and preparations had 
evidently been made with extra care for an afternoon tea of 
an especially delicate character, with a rack of such thin, dry 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


365 


toast as Mrs. Armstrong’s employer affected, and a choice pat 
of Aylesbury butter, set forth upon the whitest of table-cloths, 
and flanked by a glass jar of jam — glass of that ornate char- 
acter which dazzles the purchaser into comparative indifference 
as to the quality of the jam; just as admiring man, caught by 
outward beauty, is apt to shut his eyes to the lack of more 
lasting charms in the way of temper and character. 

Mother thought perhaps you’d honor her by taking a cup 
of tea this warm afternoon, sir,” said Mrs. Armstrong, when 
Theodore had seated himself in the chair of honor opposite the 
invalid, “ and then you can have your little talk over old times 
while I look after Armstrong’s supper. He’ll eat any bit I 
choose to give him for his dinner, and there’s days he don’t 
get no dinner at all, but he always looks for something tasty 
for supper; don’t he, mother?” 

Mrs. Dugget acknowledged this trait in her son-in-law’s 
character, and Theodqre having graciously accepted her hos- 
pitality, Mrs. Armstrong poured out the tea, and waited upon 
the distinguished guest, and having done this withdrew to her 
domestic duties. She was visible in front of the window five 
minutes afterward, setting out with a basket over her arm, 
evidently in quest of the “ something tasty ” that was needful 
to her husband’s well-being. 

“ Your daughter tells me that you remember my cousin. 
Lord Oheriton, when he was Mr. Dalbrook,” said Theodore, 
when he and the old woman were alone together, except for 
the presence of a very familiar black cat, which pushed its 
damp, cold nose into Theodore’s hand, and rubbed his sleek 
fur against Theodore’s legs, with an air of slavish adulation. 

“It isn’t everybody that Tom takes to,” said Mrs. Dugget, 
touched by her favorite’s conduct. “He’s a rare judge of 
character, is Tom. I’ve had him from a kitten, and his 
mother before him. Yes, sir, I ought to remember his lord- 
ship, seeing. that I waited upon him for over eleven years; and 
a quiet gentleman he was to attend upon, giving next to no 
trouble, and never using bad language, or coming home the 
worse for drink, as I’ve known a gentleman behave in that 
very set. ” 

“ Did he live in his chambers all that time?’ 

“ Well, sir, nominally he did, but actually he didn’t. He 
had his bedroom and his bath-room, just as you have; and the 
rooms was furnished pretty comfortable, and everything about 
them was very neat, for he was uncommonly particular, was 
Mr. Dalbrook; and he was always there of a day, and all day 
long, except when he was at the law courts, for there never 


264 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


was a more persevering gentleman. But after the first three 
years I can't say that he lived in Ferret Court. He came 
there by nine or ten o’clock every morning; and sometimes he 
stayed till ten o’clock at night, and sometimes he left as early 
as five in the afternoon; but he didn’t live there no more after 
the third year, when he was beginning to get on a bit. There 
was his rooms, and there was nothing altered, except that he 
took away his dressing-case and a good many of his clothes; 
but there was everything left that he wanted for his toilet, 
and all in apple-pie order for him to fall back upon his old 
ways at any time. Only, as I said before, he didn’t live there 
no longer; and instead of having his dinner in his own room 
at seven o’clock, he never took anything more than a biscuit 
and a glass of sherry, or a brandy and soda.” 

“ Did this change in his habits come about suddenly?” 

“ Yes, sir, it did, without an hour’s warning. I comes to 
his rooms one morning and finds that his bed hadn’t been 
slept in, and later on in the day he says: ‘ Be good enough to 
pack my dressing-case and the clothes I’ve put out, Mrs. 
I) ugget, in the small portmanteau.’ I asked him if he was 
going into the country, and he says yes, he would be sleeping 
out of town for a few nights, and from that time to the end of 
mv service in Ferret Court he never spent another night 
there.” 

‘‘ He had taken lodgings out of town, 1 conclude? I sup- 
pose you knew his other address?” 

‘‘No, sir, he never told me where his home was, for of 
course he must have had a home somewhere. No man would 
be a waif and stray for all those years — above all, such a quiet, 
steady-going gentleman as Mr. Dalbrook. I’ve heard other 
gentlemen accuse him of being a hermit. ‘ One never sees 
you nowhere,’ they says. ‘ You’re as steady as Old Time,’ 
they says. And so he was; but he was very^secret with his 
steadiness.” 

“ Had you any idea where that second home of his was — in 
what part of the suburbs? It could not have been very far 
from London, since you say he came to his chambers before 
ten o’clock every morning?” 

“ It was oftener nine than ten, sir,” said Mrs. Dugget. 

^ She paused a little before replying to his question, watching 
him with a sly smile as he caressed the obtrusive cat. She 
had her own notions as to the motive of his curiosity. He had 
expectations from Lord Cheriton, perhaps, and he wanted to 
discover if there were anything in the background of his kins- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 

man^s history which was likely to interfere with the fruition of 
his mercenary hopes. 

‘‘ It was a good many years after Mr. Dalbrook left off living 
in his rooms that 1 made a sort of discovery/’ she said; “ and 
1 knew my place too well to take any advantage of that dis- 
covery. But still 1 had my suspicions, and I believe they were 
not far off the truth. 

“ What was the nature of your discovery?^^ 

“ Oh, well, you see, sir, it wasn^t much to talk about, only 
it set me thinking. It was two or three years before Mr. 
Dalbrook left Ferret Court and went to that first-floor set in 
King’s Bench Walk, but he was beginning to be a great man, 
and he had more work than he could do, slave as hard as he 
might; and he did slave, I can tell you, sir. His rooms in 
Ferret Court were very shabby— they hadn’t had a bit of pain 
or a pail of whitewash for I don’t know how long, so just be- 
fore the Long Vacation he says to me: ‘ I’m going to get these 
rooms done up, Mrs. Dugget, while I’m out of town. I’ve 
got an estimate from a party in Holborn, and he’s to paint the 
wainscot and clearcoal the ceiling, and do the whole thing for 
, nine pound seven and eightpence, in a workman-like manner. 
You’ll please to clean up after him, and do away with all the 
waste paper and rubbish, and get everything tidy before 
November.’ ” 

Mrs. Dugget paused, and refreshed herself with half a cup 
of tea, and apologized for the obtrusiveness of the cat. 

“ I hope you don’t object to cats, sir.” 

Theodore smiled, reflecting that any man who objected to 
cats would have fled from that stuffy parlor before now. 

“ No, I am rather fond of them, as an inferior order of dog. 
Well, now, as to this discovery of yours, Mrs. Dugget:” 

“ I’m coming to it as fast as I can, sir. You must know 
that there was a lot of waste paper in one -of the closets beside 
the fire-place, and you are aware how roomy those closets in 
Ferret Court are. I never held with burning waste paper, 
first because it’s dangerous with regard to fire, and next be- 
cause they’ll give you three shillings a sack for it at some of 
. the paper mills; so I had always emptied the waste-paper 
baskets into this closet, which was made no other use of, and 
thfe bottom of the closet was chock-full of old letters, en- 
, velopes, pamphlets, and such like. So I took my sack, and 1 
sat down on the floor and filled it. Now, as I was putting in 
ttie papers by handfuls — taking my time over it, for the 
. painters, wasn’t coming till the following Monday, and all my 
gentlemen was away on their holidays — I was struck by seeing 


^68 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


such a number of envelopes addressed to the same name — ‘ J. 
Danvers, Esq., Myrtle Cottage, Camberwell Grove. How did 
Mr. Dalbrook come to have all those envelopes belonging to 
Mr. Danvers? There must have been letters inside the- envel- 
opes, and what business had he with Mr. Danvers^s letters ?^^ 

‘‘ They may have been letters bearing upon some case on 
which he was engaged, said Theodore. 

“ So they might, sir, but would he have the letters?^^ asked 
the laundress, shrewdly, WouldnT that be the solicitor's 
business?" 

“You are right, Mrs. Dugget. I see you have profited by 
your experience in the Temple." 

“ I had the curiosity to look at the postmarks on those en- 
velopes, sir. There was over a hundred of 'em, 1 should 
think, some whole, and some torn across, and the postmarks 
told me that they spread over years. That closet hadn't been 
cleared out for eight or nine years, to my knowledge, and 
those envelopes went back for the best part of that time, and 
the longer I looked at them the more I wondered who Mr. 
Danvers was. " 

# 

“ And did you come to any conclusion at last?" 

“ Well, sir, I had my own idea about it, but it isn't my 
place to say what that idea was. " 

“ Come, come, Mrs. Dugget, you have no employer now, 
and you are beholden to no one. You are a free agent, and 
have a perfect right to give expression to your opinion." 

“ If I thought it would go no further, sir." 

“ It shall go no further." 

“ Very well then, sir, to be candid, 1 thought that James 
Dalbrook and J. Danvers. Esq., were the same person, and 
that Mr. Dalbrook had been living in Camberwell under an 
assumed name. " 

“ Would not that seem a very curious thing for a profes- 
sional man in Mr. Dalbrook's position to do?" inquired Theo- 
dore, gravely. 

“It, might seem curious to you, sir, but I've seen a good 
deal of professional gentlemen in my time, and it didn't strike 
me as very uncommon. Gentlemen have their own reasons for 
what they do, and the more particular they are from a profes- 
sional point of view the more convenient they may fir/d it to 
make a little alteration in their names now and again." 

Mrs. Dugget looked at him with a significant shrewdness, 
which gave her the air of a female Mephistopheles, a creature 
deeply versed in all things evil. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


^69 


Bid your curiosity prompt you to try and verify your sus- 
picions?’^ he asked. 

The old woman looked at him searchingly before she an- 
swered, as if trying to discover what value there might be for 
him in any information she had it in her power to give or to 
withhold. So far she had been carried along by her inherent 
love of gossip, stimulated by the wish to stand well with her 
daughter’s employer, and perhaps with a view to such small 
amenities as a pound of tea or a bottle of whisky. But at this 
point something in Theodore’s earnest manner suggested to 
her that’ her knowledge of his .kinsman’s life might have a 
marketable value, and she therefore became newly reticent. 

It doesn’t become me to talk about a gentleman like Mr. 
Balbrook, your namesake and blood relation, too, sir,” she 
said, folding her. rheumatic hands rneekly. “ I’m afraid I’ve 
made too free with my tongue already.” 

Theodore did not answer her immediately. He took a 
letter-case from his breast pocket, and slowly and deliberately 
extracted two crisp bank-notes from one of the divisions. 
These he opened and spread calmly and carefully on the table, 
smoothing out their crisp freshness, which crackled under his 
hand. 

There is something very pleasant in the aspect of a new 
bank-note; money created expressly, as it were, for the first 
owner; virgin wealth, pure and uncontaminated by the deal- 
ings of the multitude. These were only five-pound notes, it is 
true, the lowest in the scale of English paper-money — despica- 
ble in the eye of a millionaire — yet to Mrs. Dugget those two 
notes lying on the table in front of her suggested vast wealth. 
It is doubtful if she had ever seen two notes together in the 
whole of her previous experience. Her largest payment was a 
quarter’s rent, her largest receipt had been a quarter’s wages. 
She had managed to save a little money in tha course of her 
laborious days, but her savings had been accumulated in 
sovereigns and half sovereigns, which had been promptly 
transferred to the savings-bank. Bank-notes to her mind were 
the symbols of Titanic wealth. 

‘‘ Now, I am not going to beat about the bush, Mrs. Bug- 
get,” §aid Theodore, with a matter-of-fact air. ‘‘ I have a 
great respect for my kinsman. Lord Cheriton, who has been a 
kind friend to me. You may be assured, therefore, that if I 
am curious about his past life I mean him no harm. I have 
reasons of my own, which it is not convenient for me to ex- 
plain, for wanting to know all about his early struggles, his 
friends, and his enemies. I feel perfectly sure that you foL 


^370 : co:^E. 

lowed up your discovery of these envelopes — that you itook the 
trouble to find Myrtle Cottage, and to ascertain the kind of 
people who lived there/ ^ Her face told him that he wals 
right. “ If you choose to be frank with me, and tell me all 
you can, those two five-pound notes are very much at your 
service. If ycu prefer to hold your tongue I can only wish 
you good-afternoon, and try to make my discoveries unaided, 
which will not be very easy after a lapse of over twenty 
years. 

“I don’t want to keep any useful information from you, 
.sir, provided you’ll promise not to let anything I may tell you 
get to Lady Cheriton’s ears.' I shouldn’t like to make un- 
happiness between man and wife,” 

“I promise that Lady Cheriton shall not be made unhappy 
by any indiscretion of mine.” 

“ That’s all I care about, sir,” said Mrs.'Dugget, piously, 
with her keen old eye upon the notes; ‘‘and being sure of 
that, I don’t mind owning that I did take the trouble to follow 
up the address upon the envelopes. Now, when, a gentleman 
like Mr. Dalbrook — a gentleman as always pays his way regu- 
lar, and stands high in his profession — when such a gentleman 
as that changes his name, you may be sure there’s a lady in 
the case. If you take up a paper, sir, and happen to glance 
at a divorce case, promiscuous, as I do sometimes when my 
son-in-law leaves his ‘ Telegraph ’ or his ‘ Echo ’ lying about — 
you’ll find that the gentleman who runs away with the lady 
always changes his name first thing — whether he and the lady 
go to a hotel, or takes lodgings, or go on the Continent— he 
always takes another name. I don’t think the change does 
him much good, for wherever he goes people seem to know all 
about him, and come out with their knowledge in court directly 
it’s wanted — but it seems as if he must always act so, and act 
so he"* does.” 

Theodore submitted to this disquisition in silence; but he 
touched the notes lightly with his gngers, and made them 
crackle, by way of stimulus to Mrs. Dugget’s intellect. 

“I felt sure if Mr. Dalbrook had been living at Myrtle 
Cottage under the name of Danvers there was a lady mixed up 
in it, and being as it was the Long Vacation, when I knew he 
generally went abroad, I thought I would try and satisfy my- 
self about him. I thought I should feel more comfortable in 
.waiting upon him when I knew the worst. And then Camber- 
well Grove was such a little way off. It would be just a nice 
outing for me of a summer evening; so what did I do one 
doyely >varm afternoon but take my tea a little earlier than 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


m 

usual, and trot off to the corner of Lancaster Place, where I 
waited for a Waterloo ^bus coming sauntering along the Strand 
as if time was made for slaves, and there was no such things 
as loop-lines or trains to be caught. I hadn’t no train to 
catch, so I didn’t mind the sauntering and the dawdling, and 
the taking up and setting down. I had all the summer even- 
ing before me when I got out at the Green and made my way 
to the Grove. It’s a beautiful romantic place, Camberwell 
Grove, sir. I don’t know whether you know it, but if you do 
I’m sure you’ll own that there ain’t a prettier neighborhood 
near London. Twenty years ago they used still to show you 
the garden where George Barnwell murdered his uncle; but 1 
dare say that’s been done away with by now. It took me a 
good time to find Myrtle Cottage, for it was one of the smallest 
houses in the Grove, and it stood back in a pretty little 
garden, and there was nothing on the gate to tell if it was 
Myrtle or otherwise. But I did find it at last, thanks to a 
young house-maid who was standing at the gate, talking to a 
grocer’s lad. The grocer’s lad made off when he saw me, and 
for the first few minutes the girl was inclined to be disagree- 
able; but she came round very quickly, and I dare say she was 
glad to have some one to talk to on that solitary summer even- 
ing. ‘ Cook’s out for the evening,’ she says, ‘ and I can’t stop 
in the house alone.’ And then we got talking, and after we’d 
talked a bit standing at the gate she asked me into the gar- 
den, where there was a long narrow grass-plot, screened off 
from the high-road by two horse-chestnut trees and some 
laburnums; and there was some garden chairs and a table on 
the grass, and the young woman asked me to sit down. She’d 
got her work-basket out there, and she’d been making herself 
an apron. ‘ I can’t bear the house of a summer evening,’ she 
says; ‘it gives me the horrors.’ Well, we talked of her 
master and mistress, as was natural. She’d lived with them 
over a twelvemonth, and it was a pretty good place, but very 
dull, and the missus had a temper, and was dreadfully par- 
ticular, and expected things as nice as if she had ten servants 
instead of two, and was very mean into the bargain, and 
seemed afraid of spending money. ‘ 1 shouldn’t be so partic- 
ular if I was her,’ the girl said, and then she told me that she 
knew things wasn’t all right, though they seemed a very re- 
spectable couple, and the lady went to church regularly. ” 

“ What made her suspect that things were wrong?” asked 
Theodore, Mrs. Dugget having paused at this point of the 
narrative. ^ 

“Oh, sir, servants always know. They can’t live six 


272 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


months in a house without knowing how the land lies. 
They\e got so little to think of, you see, except their masters 
and mistresses. You can^t wonder if they Ye always on the 
watch and the listen, meaning no harm, poor things. If you 
was shut up in a stuffy little kitchen all day, and never seeing 
no one but the lads from the tradespeople for two or three 
minutes at a time, you^d watch and you’d listen. It’s human 
nature. People don’t like reading servants, and they don’t 
like gadding servants, so they must put with servants that 
think a good deal of what’s going on round them. The house- 
maid told me she was sure from the solitary way Mr. and Mrs. 
Danvers lived that there was a screw loose somewhere. ‘ No 
one never comes near them,’ she said, ‘ and she never goes no- 
where except for a walk with him. No visitors, no friends. I 
can’t think how she bears her life. She hasn’t a party-gown, 
even. If anybody asked her to a party she couldn’t go. 
When he took her abroad last month she was all in a fluster 
and excitement, just like a child, or like a prisoner that’s go- 
ing to be let out of prison. She shook hands with cook and 
me when she said good-bye, and that isn’t like her. ‘ I feel 
so happy, Jane,’ she says, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ 
No more I think she did. She looked quite wild with pleasure, 
and quite young, too, in her new bonnet, although in a general 
way she looks older than him. And then the girl told me 
how fond she was of him, though she showed her temper now 
and then, even to him. Not often, the girl said; and any 
quarrel with him threw her into a dreadful way afterward, 
and she would be awake and sob all night long. The girl had 
heard her; for it was a trumpery little house, though it was 
pretty to look at, and the walls were very thin. I could see 
with my own eyes that it wasn’t much of a house; a sort of 
dressed-up cottage, with a veranda, smothered in creepers up 
to the roof. It looked pretty and countrifled after the Temple, 
and I could understand that Mr. Dalbrook liked living in such 
a lovely place as Camberwell Grove. ” 

‘‘ Did you find out what the lady was like?” asked Theo- 
dore. 

“ You may be sure I tried to do that, sir. How could 1 
help being interested in a lady that had such an influence over 
one of my gentlemen? The girl told me that Mrs. Danvers 
was one of the ‘has beens.’ She had been handsome, per- 
haps, once upon a time; and she might have had a flne figure 
once upon a time; but she had neither face nor figure now. 
She was pale and care-worn, and she was very thin. She 
didn’t do anything to set herself off, either, like other ladies of 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


273 


five-and-thirfcy. She wore the same merino gown month after 
month, and she had only one silk gown in her wardrobe. She 
was always neat and nice, like a lady; but she didn^t seem to 
care much how she looked. She told the girl once that she 
and Mr. Danvers would be better oS by and by, and then all 
things would be different with them. ‘ I ahi only waiting for 
those happier days,^ she says, but the girl fancied she would 
be an old woman before those days came.^^ 

“Were there any children?^ ^ 

“ I could not find out for certain. The girl fancied from 
chance words she had overheard that there had been a baby, 
but that it had been sent away, and that this was a grievance 
between them, and came up when they* quarreled, which was 
not often, as I said before. Altogether I left Camberwell 
Grove feeling very sorry for the lady who was called Mrs. 
Danvers; and I thought it was a great pity if Mr. Dalbrook 
wanted to make a home for himself he couldnT have managed 
it better. I made great friends with Jane, the house-maid, 
before I left that garden, and 1 asked her when she had an 
evening out to come and take a cup of tea with me; and if she 
could get leave to go to the theater, my youngest son, who was 
living at home then, could take her, along with my daughter, 
who was then unmarried and in service in New Bridge Street. 
The young woman came once, about Christmas-time, and she 
told me things were just the same as they had been at Myrtle 
Cottage.- She talked very freely about Mr. and Mrs. Danvers 
over her tea, but she had no idea that he was beknown to me, 
or that he was a barrister with chambers in the Temple. She 
thought he was something in the city. 1 asked her if it was 
Mr. Danvers who was mean and kept his lady short of money, 
but she thought not. She thought it was Mrs. Danvers that 
had a kind of mania for saving; for she was quite put out if 
Mr. Danvers brought her home a present that cost a few 
pounds. It seemed as if they were saving up for some pur- 
pose, for they used to talk to each other of the money he was 
putting by, and it was plain they were looking forward to a 
better house and a happier kind of life. Jane thought that 
either she had a husband hidden away somewhere — in a lunatic 
asylum, perhaps — or he had another wife; but no one ever 
came to Myrtle Cottage to interfere with them.^^ 

Mrs. Dugget stopped to replenish the thrifty little fire with 
a very small scoopful of coals, during which operation the 
sleek black cat leaped upon her back and balanced himself 
upon her shoulders while she bent over the grate. 

“ Well, sir, that was Janets first and last visit. She got 


274 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


married all of a sudden before Lady Day, and she went to live 
in the country, where her husband was postman in her native 
village, and I never see no more of her. I went to Camber- 
well Grove again in the Lon§ Vacation, when I knew Mr. 
Dalbrook was away, but I found only an old woman in the 
house as care-taker, stone deaf, and disagreeable into the 
bargain. 1 went again the year after, and the house was to 
let unfurnished; and that, sir, is all I could ever find out 
about the lady called Mrs. Danvers. Mr. Dalbrook moved 
into King^s Bench Walk the following year, and less than six 
months after that I saw his marriage in the papers; and his 
clerk told me he had married a very rich young lady, and was 
going to buy an estate in the country. 

And this history of the home in Camberwell Grove is all 
you ever knew about Mr. James Dalbrook'^s life outside the 
chambers in Ferret Court?’"’ 

‘‘Yes, sir, that is all I ever heard, promiscuously or other- 
wise.” 

“ Well, Mrs. Dugget, you have been frank with me, and 
you have earned my little present,” said Theodore, handing 
the two notes, which her old fingers touched tremulously in a 
rapture that was too much for words. It was with, an effort 
that she faltered out her thanks for his generosity, which, she 
protested, she had never “ looked for.” 

Theodore walked back toward the Temple deep in thought; 
indeed, so troubled and perplexed were his thoughts that upon 
approaching Ferret Court he stopped short, and instead of 
going straight to his chambers turned aside and went to the 
Gardens, where he walked up and down the same gravel path 
for an hour, pondering upon that picture of the hidden home 
in Camberwell Grove conjured up before him by the loquacious 
laundress. Yes, he could imagine that obscure existence al- 
most as if he had seen it with his bodily eyes. He could fancy 
the solitary home where never kinsman or familiar friend 
crossed the threshold ; a home destitute of all home ties and 
homely associations; a home never smiled upon by the parson 
of the parish; cut off from all local interests, identified with 
nothing, a mystery among the commonplace dwellings around 
and about ity a subject for suspicion and furtive observation 
from the neighbors. He could fancy those two lonely lives 
preying upon each other, too closely united for peaceful union; 
the woman too utterly dependent upon the man — she feeling 
the humiliation of her dependence; he feeling her helplessness 
a burden. He could picture them, loving each other, per- 
haps, passionately, jealously to the last, and yet weary of each 


THB , BAT -//WILLy 




j/](ther^ worn out and- weighed down by the narrowness of a life 
; walled off from the rest of the world and all its changeful 
I interests and widening sympathies. And then he saw the 
, picture in still darker colors, as it might have been ere that 
_un known figure faded from the canvas. He thought of the 
; ambitious, successful barrister, heartsick at the fetters which 
..he had fastened upon his life, tired of his faded mistress, see- 
ing all gates open to him were he but free to pass them; still 
..living apart from the world, at a time of life when all the 
social instincts are at their highest development, when a man 
loves the society of his fellow-men, the friction of crowds, the 
sound of his own voice, and every social tribute that the world 
can offer to his talents and his success. He saw his kinsman 
. galled by the chain which love and honor had hung about 
- him, loathing his bondage, longing for liberty — saw him with 
j the possibility of a brilliant marriage looking him in the face, 
a lovely, trusting girl ready to throw herself into his arms, a 
fortune at his feet, and the keen ambition of a self-made man 
.goading him like a spur. How did it end? Did death set 
him free — death, the sovereign loosener of all bonds? Or did 
' his mistress sacrifice herself and her broken heart to his wel- 
‘ fare, and release him of her own accord? There are women 
; capable of such sacrifices. It would seem that his disentangle- 
. ment, however it came about, had been perfect of its kind; 
for no murmur of a youthful intrigue, no scandal about a cast- 
-off mistress, had ever clouded the married life of James Dal- 
brook. Even in Cheriton village, where the very smallest 
nucleus in the way of a report was apt to swell to the dimen- 
, sions of a gigantic scandal, even at Cheriton, nobody had ever 
‘ hinted at sins or indiscretions in the earlier years of the local 
magnate. 

And then Theodore DalbroOk asked himself the essential 
question. What bearing, if any, had this episode of his kins- 
._man^s life upon the murder of Juanita^s husband? What dark 
and vengeful figure lurked in the background of that common 
story of dishonorable love — an outraged husband, a brother, a 
■ father? That* obscure life apart from friends and acquain- 
. tances would show that some great wrong had been done, some 
.sacred tie had been broken. Only a sinful union so hides its 
furtive happiness — only a deep sense of degradation will recon- 
ile a woman to banishment from the society of her own sex. 

Whether that forsaken mistress were dead or living there 
might lurk in her sad history the elements of tragedy, the 
motive. for a -ghastly revenge; and on this account the story 
s^d grim fascination for Theodore Dalbrool^: . He lay 




m 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


awake the greater part of the night thinking in a fitful troubled 
way of that illicit menage in the unfashionable suburb — the 
suburb whose very existence is unknown to society. He fell 
asleep long after the sun was up, only to dream confusedly of 
a strange woman who was now James Dalbrook^s lawful wife — 
and now his victim — and whose face had vague resemblances 
to other faces, and who was and was not half a dozen other 
women in succession. 

He walked to Camberwell on the following afternoon, sur- 
prised at the strange world through which he passed on his 
way there, the teeming, busy, noisy world — the world which 
makes such a hard fight for life. The grove itself, after that 
bustling, seething road, seemed a place in which nightingales 
might have warbled, and laughing girls hidden from their 
lovers in the summer dusk. The very atmosphere of decay 
from a better state was soothing. There were trees still and 
gardens, and here and there decent houses; and in a long, 
narrow garden between two larger houses he found Myrtle 
Cottage. There was a board up, and the neglected garden 
indicated that the cottage had been a long time without a 
tenant. 

There was a policeman^s wife living in it, with a colony of 
small children, in the cotton pinafore stage of existence, and 
with noses dependent upon maternal supervision, so much so 
that scarcely had the matron attended to one small snub than 
her attention was called off to another, which gave a distracted 
air to all her conversation. 

She took Mr. Dalbfook over the house, and expatiated upon 
the damp, and the utter incompetence of the cistern and pipes 
to meet the exigencies of a family, which was the more to be 
regretted on the ground that the landlord declined to do any- 
thing in the way of repairs, as he intended to surrender the 
house for immediate demolition at the expiration of his lease. 

“ And indeed that^s about all it’s fit for,” said the police- 
man’s wife. “ It ain’t fit for anybody to live in.” 

The rooms had even a more desolate look than rooms in 
empty houses usually have, in consequence of this long 
neglect. The cottage had been empty for two years and a 
half, long enough for the dame to make hideous blotches upon 
all the walls, and trace discolored maps of imaginary con- 
tinents upon all the ceilings; long enough for the spiders to 
weave their webs in all the corners, and for rust to eat deep 
into the iron gates, and for rust and dirt to obscure every win- 
dow. 

Theodore stood in the room which had once been a drawing- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


277 


room, and which boasted of a long French window looking 
out upon a lawn, with a large weeping-ash directly in front of 
the window, and much too near for airiness or health, a mel- 
ancholy-looking tree in which Theodore thought Mrs. Danvers 
might have found a symbol of her own life, as she stood at the 
window and looked at those dull drooping branches against a 
background of ivy-covered wall. 


CHAPTER XX. 

“ And if we do but watch the hour, 

There never yet was human power 
Which could evade, if unforgiven. 

The patient search and vigil long 
Of him who treasures up a wrong.” 

Theodore made a tour of the little garden in the summer 
sundown. It was very small, but its age gave it a superiority 
over most suburban gardens. There were trees, and harcl}^ 
perennials that had been growing year after year, blooming 
and fading, with very little care on the part of successive ten- 
ants.* The chief charm of the garden to some people might 
have been it perfect seclusion. There was no possibility of 
being “ overlooked in this narrow pleasance, and overlook- 
ing is the curse of the average garden attached to the average 
villa. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, walking in their garden in the cool 
of the evening, like Adam and Eve in Eden, are uncomforta- 
bly conscious of Mr. and Mrs. Smith eying them from the 
drawing-room windows of next door. 

Here the high wall on one side, and the tall horse-chest- 
nuts on the other, made a perfect solitude; but seclusion on a 
very small scale is apt to merge into dullness, and it must be 
owned that the garden of Myrtle Cottage at sundown was 
about as melancholy a place as the mind of .man could im- 
agine. Theodore, contemplating it from the standpoint of 
Mrs. Danvers’s history, her friendlessness, her sense 'of deg- 
radation, wondered that she could have endured that dismal 
atmosphere for a single summer. And she had lived there for 
years; lived there till weariness must have intensified into loath- 
ing. 

“ God help her, poor soul!” he said to himself. “ How 
she must have abhorred that weeping-ash! IIow it must 
have tortured her to see the leaves go and come again year 
after year, and to know that neither spring nor autumn would 
better her fate!” 

He took down the address of the agent who had the letting 


, 278 THE DAY WILL COME. 

of the house, and left with the intention of seeing him that 
evening if possible. The landlord was a personage resembling 
the Mikado, or the Grand Llama, and was not supposed to be 
accessible to the human vision, certainly not in relation to his 
house property. The policeman\s wife averred that “ him 
and the De Crespignys owned half Camberwell. 

The agent was represented to live over his office, which was 
in no less famous a locality than Camberwell Green, and was 
likely therefore to oblige Mr. Dalbrook by seeing him upon a 
business matter after business hours. . It was not much past 
seven when Theodore entered the offibe, where he found the 
agent extending his business hours so far as to be still seated 
at his desk, deep in the revision of a catalogue. . He was a 
very pleasant and genial agent, put aside the catalogue im- 
mediately, asked Theodore to be seated, and wheeled round his 
office chair to talk to him. ^ 

“ Myrtle Cottage? Yes, a charming little box, convenient 
and compact, a bijou residence for a bachelor with a small 
establishment. Such a nice garden, too, retired and rustic. 
If you were thinking of taking the property on a repairing 
lease, the rent would be very moderate, really a wouderfully 
advantageous occasion for any one wanting a pretty seel uded 
place. 

“ To tell you the truth, Mr. Atkins, I am not thinking of 
taking that house or any house. I have come to ask you a 
few questions about a former tenant, and I shall take it as a 
favor if you will be so good as to answer them.^^ 

The agent looked disappointed, but he put his pen behind 
his ear, crossed his legk, and prepared himself for conversation. 

“ Do you mean a recent tenant?^^ he asked. . 

No; the gentleman 1 am interested in left Myrtle Cottage 
twenty years ago — nearer five-and-twenty years, perhaps. 
His name was Danvers. ^ ’ 

The agent gave a suppressed whistle, and looked at his in- 
terlocutor with increasing interest. 

“ Oh, you want to know something , about Mr. Danvers. 
Was he an acquaintance of yours?^^ 

. “Hewas.^^ 

‘‘ Humph! He is more than old enough to be your father; 
He might almost be your grandfather. Do you, know him 
intimately ?^^ 

“As intimately as a man of my age can know a man of his 
age.” 

“ And position,^^ added the agent, looking at his visitor 
shrewdly. , , , . 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


m 

Theodore returned the look. 

“ 1 don^t quite follow your meaning/^ he said. 

Come now, sir, if you know anything at all about the gen- 
tleman in question, you must know that his name is not 
Danvers, and never was Danvers; that he took Myrtle Cot- 
tage under an assumed name, and lived there for nearly ten 
years under that assumed name; that he never let any of his 
friends or acquaintances across his threshold; and that he 
thought he had hoodwinked me, me a man of the world, mov- 
ing about in the world, among other men of the world. Why, 
sir, Mr. Danvers had not paid me three half years'’ rent in 
notes or gold, as he always paid, and in this office here — be- 
fore I had found out that he was the rising barrister, Mr. Dal- 
brook — and before I had guessed the reason of his hole-and- 
corner style of life.’^ 

What became of the lady who was called Mrs. Danvers?:’^ 

“ And who in all probability was Mrs. Danvers,’^ said Mr. 
Atkins. ‘‘ I have reason to believe that was her name. What 
became of her? God knows. A servant came to me one 
August morning with the keys and a half yearns rent — tho 
tenant had given notice to surrender at Michaelmas quarter, 
that being the quarter at which he entered upon possession. 
Mr. and Mrs. Danvers had gone abroad, to Belgium, the wom- 
an thought; and as it was their , present intention to live 
abroad, their furniture had all been removed to the Pan- 
technicon upon the previous day, and the house was empty 
and at my disposal.'’^ 

“ Did you hear nothing more of them after that?’^ 

“ I heard of him, sir, as all the world heard of him — heard 
of his marriage with a wealthy young Spanish lady, heard of 
his elevation to the peerage — but of Mrs. Danvars 1 never 
heard a syllable. I take it she was pensioned off, and that 
she lived — and may have died — on the Continent. Why, there 
are a lot of sleepy old Flemish towns — I^m a bit of a traveler 
in my quiet way — which seem to have been created for that 
purpose. 

‘‘ Is that all you can tell me about your tenants, Mr. At- 
kins? I am not prompted by idle curiosity in my inquiries. 
I have a very strong motive — 

Don^t trouble yourself to explain, sir. I know nothing 
about Mr. or Mrs. Danvers which I have any desire to hold 
back — or which I am under any obligation to keep back. 
My business relations with the gentleman never went beyond 
letting him Myrtle Cottage, which I let to him witho.ut a ref- 
erence, on the strength of a twelvemonth'^s rent in advance, 


280 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


und a deuce of a hurry he was in to get into the place. As 
for Mrs. Danvers, you may be surprised to hear that I never 
saw her face. I’ni hot a prying person, and as the rent was 
never overdue, I had no occasion to call at the house. But I 
did see some one who had a strong bearing upon the lady^s 
life, and a very troublesome customer that person was."'-’ 

“ Who was he?^^ 

No less an individual than her husband. A man dashed 
into this office one winter afternoon, a little after dusk, and 
asked me if I had let a house to a person called Danvers. I 
could see that he had been drinking, and that he was in a state 
of strong excitement; so 1 answered him shortly enough, and 
I kept myself well between him and the door, so as to be able 
to pitch him out if he got troublesome. He told me that heM 
Just come from Myrtle Cottage, that he had been refused ad- 
mittance there, although the woman who lived there was his 
wife. He wanted to know if the house had been taken by her, 
or by the scoundrel who passed himself off as her husband ! 
If it had been taken in her name, it was his house, and he 
would very soon let them know that he had the right to be 
there. I told him that I knew nothing about him or his 
rights; that my client^s tenant was Mr. Danvers, and that 
there the business ended. He was very violent upon this,, 
abused my tenant, talked about his own wrongs and his wife^s 
desertion of him, asked me if I knew that this man who called 
himself Danvers was an impostor, who had taken the house in 
a false name, and who was really a beggarly barrister called 
Dalbrook; and then, from blasphemy and threatening he fell 
to crying, and sat in my office shivering and whimpering like 
a half-demented creature, till I took compassion upon him so 
far as to give him a glass of brandy and send my office lad out 
with him to put him into a cab.^^ 

‘‘ Did he tell you his name or profession 
“No, he was uncommonly close about himself. I asked 
him if the lady^s name was really Danvers, and if he was Mr. 
Danvers; but he only stared at me in a blank way with his 
drunken eyes. It was hopeless trying to get a straight answer 
from him about anything. Heaven knows how he got home 
that night, for he wouldn^t tell the office boy his address, and 
only told the cabman to drive to Holborn. ‘ 1^11 pull him up 
when I get there, ^ he said. He may have been driven about 
half the night, for all 1 can tell. 

“Was that all you ever saw or heard of him?^^ 

“ All I ever saw, but not all I ever heard. Servants and 
neighbors will talk, you see, sir, and I happened to be told of 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


m 


three or four occasions — at considerable intervals — at which 
my gentleman made unpleasantness at Myrtle Cottage. He 
would go there wild with drink — I believe he never went when 
he was sober — and would threaten and kick up a row, and 
then would allow himself to be flung out of the place like the 
craven hound he was. If he wanted to get his wife away from 
the life she was leading he would have gone to work in a differ- 
ent manner; but it’s my opinion he wanted nothing of the 
kind. He was savage and vindictive in his cups, and he 
wanted to frighten her and to annoy the man who had tempted 
her away from him. But he was a poor creature, and after 
blustering and threatening he would allow himself to be flung 
out-of-doors like a stray cur.” 

“ What kind of a man did he look? A broken-down gen- 
tleman?” 

“ Yes, I should say he had been a gentleman once, but he 
had come down a longish way. He had come down as low as 
drink and dissipation can bring a man. Altogether I should 
consider him a dangerous customer.” 

‘‘ A man capable of violence, of crime even?” 

“ Perhaps. A man who wouldn’t have stopped at crime if 
he hadn’t been a white-livered hound. I tell you, sir, the 
fellow was afraid of Mr. Dalbrook, although Mr. Dalbrook 
ought to have been afraid of him. He was a craven to the 
core of his heart. ” 

“ What age did you give him?” 

“ At the time he came to me I should put him down for 
about six-and- thirty. ” 

“ And that is about how many years ago?” 

“ Say four-and-twenty; I can’t be certain to a year or so. 
It wasn’t a business transaction, and I haven’t anj record of 
the fact.” 

“ AVas he a powerful-looking man?” 

“He was the remains of a powerful man; he must have 
been a fine man when he was ten years younger, a handsome 
man too — one of those fair-complexioned, blue-eyed, aquiline- 
nosed men who set off good clothes — the kind of a man to do 
justice to a rig-out from a fashionable tailor. He was a wreck 
when I saw him, but he was the wreck of a handsome man. ” 

“ And you take it that he was particularly vindictive?” 

“ He was as vindictive as a cur can be.” 

“ And was his anger strongest against the lady, do you sup- 
pose, or against the gentleman?” 

“ Decidedly against the gentleman. He was full of envy 
and hatred and all uncharitableness toward Mr. Dalbrook. 


282 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


He affected to think contemptuously of his talents, and to be- 
little him in every way, while he was bursting with envy at his 
growing success. He was jealous and angry as a husband, no 
doubt; but he was still more jealous and still angrier as a dis- 
appointed man against a successful man. He was as venomous 
as conscious failure can be. And now, sir, that Fve spoken 
so freely about this little domestic drama, which was all past 
and done with twenty years ago, and in which I only felt in- 
terested as a man of the world, now may I ask your name, and 
how you come to be so keenly interested in so remote an 
eveut?^^ 

“ My name is Dalbrook,^^ replied Theodore, taking out his 
card and laying it upon the agent^s desk. 

“You don^t mean to say sC! A relation of Lord Cheri- 
ton’s?^^ 

“ His cousin, a distant cousin, but warmly attached to him 
and — his. The motive of my inquiry need be no secret. A 
dastardly murder was committed last summer in Lord Cheri- 
ton^s house — 

“ Yes, I remember the circumstances.^^ 

“ A seemingly motiveless murder; unless it was the act of 
some secret foe — foe either of the man who was killed, or of 
his wife^s father. Lord Cheriton. I have reason to know that 
the young man who was killed had never made an enemy. 
His life was short and blameless. Now, a malignant cur, such 
as the man you describe — a man possessed by the devil of drink 
— would be just the kind of creature to assail the strong man 
through his defenseless daughter. To murder her husband 
was to break her heart, and to crush her f ather^s hopes. This 
man may have discovered long beforehand how my cousin had 
built upon that marriage, how devoted he was to his daugh- 
ter, and how ambitious for her. Upon my soul, I believe that 
you have given me the clew. If we are to look for a blind 
unreasoning hatred— malignity strong enough and irrational 
enough to strike the innocent in order to get at the guilty — I 
do not think we can look for it in a more likely person than in 
the husband of Mrs. Danvers.’’^ 

“ Perhaps iiot,’^ said Mr. Atkins, keenly interested, yet 
dubious. “ But granted that he is the man, how are we to 
find him? It is about four-and-twenty years since he stood 
where you are standing now, and I have never set eyes on hiiii 
from that day to this — close upon a quarter of a centui^. I 
caiiT tell you his calling, or his kindred, the place where he 
lived, or even the name he bore, with any certainty. Danvers 
may have been only an assumed name, or it may have been 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


283 


His name. There's no knowing, or rather there’s only one 
person likely to be able to help you in the matter, and that is 
Lord Cheriton.” 

“ It would be difficult to question him upon such a sub- 
ject.” 

“ Of course it would, and I don’t suppose that even he has 
taken the trouble to keep himself posted in the movements of 
that very ugly customer. Having shunted the lady, he 
wouldn’t be likely to concern himself about the gentleman.” 

, “ A quarter of a century,” said Theodore, too thoughtful 
to give a direct answer. Yes, it must be very difficult to 
trace any man after such an interval; but if that man went to 
Cheriton Chase he must have left some kind of trail behind 
him, and it will go hard with me if I don’t get upon that trail. 
I thank you, Mr. Atkins, for the most valuable information I 
have obtained yet, and if any good comes of it you shall know. 
Good-night.” 

“ Good-night, sir. I shall be very glad to aid in the cause 
of justice. Yes, I remember the Cheriton Chase murder, and 
1 should like to see the mystery cleared up.” 


CHAPTER XXL 

“ Upon a tone, 

A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, 

And his cheek change tempestuously. . . . 

But she in these fond feelings had no share; 

Her sighs were not for him; to her he was 
Even as a brother— but no more.” 

After that conversation with the house-agent, the idea that 
he had found the clew to the Cheriton Chase mystery took 
root in Theodore Dalbrook’s mind. Takiug as his starting- ^ 
point the notion of a deadly hatred wreaking itself in an in- 
direct revenge, there seemed no more likely figure for the r61e 
of avenger than that of the wronged and- deserted husband. 
The one startling improbability in this view of the case was the 
long interval between the husband’s appearance at Myrtle 
Cottage and the date of the murder; but even this difficulty 
Theodore was able to account for upon the hypothesis of a 
gradual perversion, a descent from vice to crime, as the man’s 
nature hardened under the corrupting influence of a profligate 
life, while the old festering sore grew into a malignant canker 
under the lash of misery. He had seen, in that great seething, 
caldron of London life, men whose countenances bore the stamp 
of a degradation so profound that the most ferocious crime 


28 i 


THE DAY WILL OOME. 


might seem the normal outcome of their perverted natures. 
He could imagine how the trodden-down gentleman, steeped 
in drink, and imbittered by the idea of wrongs which had been 
the natural consequence of his own misconduct, had sunk step 
by step upon the ladder of vice, till he had arrived at the 
lowest deep of that abysmal world where the dreams of men 
are stained with blood and darkened by the shadow of the 
hangman. He could imagine him brooding over his wrongs 
for long years, nursing his jealous wrath as the one surviving 
touch of manliness that remained to him, until some news- 
paper description of the Oheriton and Carmichael wedding re- 
minded him of the bitter contrast between his own lot and that 
of his rival, and, lashed into sudden fury, he set out upon his 
murderous errand, hardly caring whom he murdered so long 
as he could hurt the man he hated. 

The very fact that Mrs. Danvers^s husband had been de- 
scribed as a craven made the idea of his guilt more likely. 
Only a coward would have chosen such a revenge; only a cow- 
ard could have stretch^ out his hand from the darkness to 
kill a man who had never injured him. The crime was the 
crime of a coward or a madman; and this man, brutalized by 
drink, may have been both madman and coward. 

Here at least was a man closely associated with James Dal- 
brook^s life, and having good cause to hate him. In the utter 
darkness surrounding the murder of Godfrey Carmichael this 
was the first fiash of light. 

And having arrived at this point, Theodore Dalbrook saw 
himself face to face with a new and seemingly insurmountable 
difficulty. To follow this clew to the end, to bring the crime 
home to the husband of Lord Cheriton^s cast-ofl: mistress, was 
to expose the history of the great man^s earlier years to the 
world at large, to offer up a reputation which had hitherto 
been stainless as a rich and savory repast to that carrion brood 
— consisting of everybody — which loves to feast upon garbage. 
How the evening newspapers would revel and wallow in the 
details of such a story! What denunciations, what gloating 
over the weakness of a strong man^s life! How the contents 
bills would bristle with appetizing headings, how the shrill- 
voiced newsboys would yell their startling particulars, their 
latest developments of the Cheriton Chase scandal. 

This must all inevitably follow upon the discovery of the 
murderer, if the murderer were indeed the injured husband. 
There could be no possible escape from that glare of publicity, 
that swelling symphony of slander. From the moment the 
law laid its hand upon the criminal, the case would pass be- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


285 


yond individual control, and individual interests and reputa- 
tions would become as naught. Justice would have to do its 
work, and in the doing of it must needs afford the usual fine 
opportunity to the newspapers. Theodore thought with hor- 
ror of such humiliation coming upon Lord Cheriton, and 
through him upon J uanita, who loved her father with' a rev- 
erential affection, and who was intensely proud of his char- 
acter and position. He thought of gentle Lady Cheriton, who 
adored her husband, and who doubtless would be made mis- 
erable by the knowledge that his first love had been given to 
another womau, whom he had loved well enough to sacrifice 
honor for the sake of that illicit love. What agony to that 
single-minded, trusting creature to find that dark spot upon 
her husband’s past, and to know that the daughter’s happiness 
had been blighted because of the father’s sin. 

With these considerations in his mind, . it seemed to Theo- 
dore that it would be better to halt on the very threshold of 
discovery; and yet there was the appalling thought of further 
possibilities in the way of crime — of a madinan’s revenge car- 
ried a stage further, a madman’s pistol aimed at a defenseless 
mother or the sleeping child. What was he to do? Was there 
no alternative between inaction and such action as must 
speedily set in motion the machinery of the law, and thus de- 
prive him of all free will in the future conduct of the case? 

Yes, there was an alternative course. If he were once as- 
sured of the identity of the assassin, it might be in his power 
to lay hands upon him, and to place him under such circum- 
stances of control in the future as would insure Juanita’s 
safety, and render any further crime impossible. If he were 
mad, as Theodore thought more than likely, he might be 
quietly got into an asylum. If he were still master of his 
actions he might be got abroad, to the remotest colony in the 
Antipodes. The knowledge of his crime would be a hold over 
him, a lever which would remove him to the uttermost ends of 
the earth, if need were. This would be an illegal compromise, 
no doubt — unjustifiable in the eye of the law — but if it insured 
Juanita’s safety, and saved her father’s character, the com- 
promise was worth making. It was, indeed, the only Way by 
which her security and her father’s good name Could be pro- 
vided for. 

To arrive at this result he had to find the man who had ap- 
peared in Mr. Atkins’s office about four-and-twenty years ago, 
and of whose subsequent existence he, Theodore, had no knowl- 
edge. 

“ I must begin at the other end,” he told himself, “ If 


286 ^ ThIe 1)AY WILL C03t^B. 

that man was the murderer, he must have been seen in the 
neighborhood. It is not possible that he could have come to 
the place, and watched and waited for his opportunity, and 
got clear off after the deed was done without being seen by 
h Liman eyes. 

And yet there remained the fact that the local policeman 
and a London detective had both failed in obtaining the faintest 
trace of a suspicious-looking stranger, or indeed of any 
stranger, male or female, who had been observed in the neigh- 
borhood of Oheriton before or after the murder; there re- 
mained the fact that a large reward had been offered without 
resulting in one scrap of information bearing upon the subject. 
How could he hope, in the face of these facts, to trace the, 
movements of a man whose personal appearance was unknown 
to him, and who had come and gone like a shadow? 

“ I can but try, and I can but fail,^^ he told himself. 
“ Knowing what I now know, I can not remain inactive.-’^ 

It may be that lie had caught something of the fiery eager- 
ness which consumed Juanita, that in his ardent desire to be 
worthy of her regard, to waste his life in her service, he had 
become, as it were, inoculated with the spirit of his mistress, 
and hoped as she hoped, and thought as she thought. 

With the beginning of the Long Vacation he went to Dor- 
chester, but this time not alone. He took his friend Cuthbert 
Ramsay with him, as a visitor to the grave old house, in the 
grave old town. 

His sisters often made a complaint against him that he never 
introduced any of his college friends to them — that whereas 
the sisters of other university men were rich in the acquaint- 
ance of Charlies and Algernons, and Freds and Toms, who 
were producible at tennis-parties and available for picnics at 
the shortest notice, they were restricted to the youths of Dor- 
chester and a horizon limited by the country houses of the im- 
mediate neighborhood. Remembering these reproaches, and 
seeing that his friend Ramsay was overworked, and obviously 
panting for rest and country air, Theodore suggested that he 
should occupy the bachelor’s room in Cornhill as long as he 
could venture to stop away from hospitals-and lectures and 
scientific investigations. 

“You want a long fallow, Cuthbert,” he said, “and you 
couldn’t“have a better lotus land than Dorchester. There’s 
not an excitement or a feverish sensation to be had within 
twenty miles, and then I really want to make you known to 
my cousin, Lord Cheriton. He is a very clever man — an all- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


2S7 


round man — and he would be interested in you and all that 
you are doing. 

‘‘ 1 shall be proud of knowing him. And then there is your 
cousin, Lady Carmichael. I am deeply interested in her, 
without having ever seen her face, and when I do see her — 

“You will say she is one of the loveliest women you ever 
saw in your life, Cuthhert. I have no doubt of that. You 
will see her beauty under a cloud, for she is not one of those 
women who begin to get over the loss of a husband as soon as 
their crape gets rusty; but her beauty is all the more touching 
on account of the grief that separates her from all other wom- 
en — even from her past self. I sometimes look at her and 
wonder if this sad and silent woman can be the Juanita I once 
knew; the light-hearted, spontaneous girl, a buoyant, joyous 
creature, all impulse and caprice, fancy and imagination.’^ 

“ You may be sure that I shall admire her> and you may be 
sure I shall not forget that there is some one whose admiration 
has a deeper root than the lust of the eye and the fancy of the 
moment.” 

Theodore would not affect to misunderstand him. It was 
not possible that he could have talked of his cousin in the 
freedom of friendship without having revealed himself to his 
friend. 

“ My dear fellow,” he said, with a sigh, “ mine is a hope- 
less case. You will know that it is so when you see Juanita 
and me together. Her mother said to me on the first day of 
this year, ‘ If ever she comes to care for an 3 ^body it will be 
some new person;’ and I have not the least doubt that her 
mother was right. Her first-love was her playfellow, the 
companion of her girlhood. A woman can not have two such 
loves. Her second attachment, if she ever make one, will be 
of a totally different character.” 

“ Who knows, Theodore? A woman’s heart is to be meas- 
ured b;y no plummet-line that I know of; it is subject to no 
scientific test; we can not say it shall give this or that result. 
It may remain cold as marble to a man through years of faith- 
ful devotion, and then, in an instant, the marble may change 
to a volcano, and hidden fires may leap out of that’ seeming 
coldness. ‘ JVil clesperandum ’ should be the motto of in- 
ven tors — and lovers. ’ ’ 

Dorchester, and especially the old house in Cornhill, re- 
ceived Mr. Ramsay with open arms. Harrington was in the 
dejected state of a young man who has been rudely awakened 
from youth’s sweetest delusion. Fooled and forsaken by 
Juliet Baldwin, he had told himself that all women are liars. 


288 THE DAY WILL COME. 

and was doing all in his power to establish his reputation as a 
woman-hater. In this temper of mind he was not averse to 
his own sex, and he welcomed his brother's friend with un- 
affected cordiality, and was endently cheered by the new life 
which Ramsay^s vivacity brought into the quiet atmosphere of 
home. 

The sisters were delighted to do honor to a scientific man, 
and were surprised, on attacking Mr. Eamsay at dinner with 
the ease and aplomb of confreres in modern science, to dis- 
cover one of two things — either that he knew nothing, or that 
they knew very little. They were at first inclined to the 
former opinion, but it gradually dawned upon them that their 
own much-valued learning was of a purely elementary char- 
acter, and that their facts were for the most part wrong. 
Chastened by this discovery, they allowed the conversation to 
drift into lighter channels, and never again tackled Mr. Ram- 
say either upon the broad and open subject of evolution, or the 
burning question of the cholera bacillus. They were even con- 
tent to leave him to the enjoyment of his own views upon 
spontaneous generation and the movement of glaciers, instead 
of setting him right upon both subjects, as they had intended 
in the beginning of their acquaintance. 

“He is remarkably handsome but horribly dogmatic,^' 
Sophia told her brother, “ and I^’m afraid he belongs to the 
showy, shallow school which has risen since the death of Dar- 
win. He would hardly have dared to talk as he did at dinner 
during Darwin^s life-time. 

“ Perhaps not, if Darwin had been omnipresent.-^^ 

“ Oh, there is a restraining influence in the very existence 
of, such a man. He is a perpetual court of appeal against 
arrogant smatterers.’’ 

“ I don’t think you can call a man who took a first-class in 
science a smatterer, Sophy. However, I’m sorry you don’t 
like my friend.” 

“ 1 like him well enough, but I am not imposed upon by 
his dogmatism.” 

The two young men drove to the Priory on the following day, 
Theodore feeling painfully eager to discover what change the 
last few months had made in Juanita. She had been in Switz- 
erland, with Lady Jane and the baby, living quietly in one of 
those little villages on the shores of the lake of the forest can- 
tons, which combine the picturesque and the dull in a remark- 
able degree — a mere cluster of chalets and cottages at the foot 
of the Rigi, facing the monotonous beauty of the lake, and the 
calm grandeur of snow-capped ihountains, which shut in that 


289 


THE DAY WILL COME. 

ti^anquil comer of the earth and shut out all the busy world 
beyond it. Nowhere else had Juanita felt that deep sense of 
seclusion, that feeling of being remote from all the din and 
press of life. 

And now she was again at the Priory. She had settled 
down there in her new position, as widow and mother, a 
woman for whom all lifer’s passionate story was over, who 
must live henceforward for that new life growing day by day 
toward that distant age of passion and of sorrow through which 
she had passed suddenly and briefly, crowding into a month 
the emotions of a life-time. There are women who have lived to 
celebrate their golden wedding who in fifty years of wedlock 
have not felt half her sum of love, and who in losing the com- 
panion of half a century have not felt half her sum of grief. 
It is the capacity for loving and sufiering which differs, and 
weighed against that Time counts but little. 

She received her cousin with all her old frank friendliness. 
She was a little more cheerful than when last they met, and 
he saw that the new interest of her life had done good. Lady 
Jane was at Swanage, and Juanita was alone at the Priory, 
though not without the expectation of company a little later 
in the year, as' the sisters and their husbands were to be with 
her before the first of October, so that the expense of pheas- 
ant-breeding might not be altogether wasted. 

You must be here as much as you can in October, Theo- 
dore,/^ she said, “ and help me to support Mr. Grenville and 
Mr. Morningside. One talks nothing but sport, and the other 
insists upon teaching ine the science of politics. 

She received Cuthbert Ramsay with a serious sweetness 
which charmed him. Yes, she was verily beautiful among 
women, exceptionally beautiful. Those southern eyes shone 
star-like in the settled pallor of her face, and her whole coun- 
tenance was etherealized by thought and grief. It touched the 
stranger to see how she struggled to put away the memory of 
her sorrow and to receive him with all due hospitality — how 
she restrained herself as she showed him the things that had 
been a part of her dead husband^s existence, and told him the 
story of the old house which had sheltered so many genera- 
tions of Carmichaels. 

. Lady Cheriton had been lunching at the Priory,^ where sho 
came at least twice a week to watch her grandson ’s^develop- 
mept in all those graces of mind and person which marked 
his superiority to the average baby. She came all the oftener 
to the Priory^ because of the difficulty in getting Juanita to 
CheritoiL 


10 


290 THE DAY WILL COME. 

“ My poor child will hardly ever come to see us/^ she told 
Theodore as they sauntered on the lawn while Juanita was 
showing Mr. Eamsay the pictures in the dining-room. “ She 
has an insurmountable horror of the house she was once so 
fond of; and I canT wonder at it, and I canH be angry with 
her. I have seen her suffering when she has been at Cher i ton, 
so 1 donT worry her to come to us often. 1 make a point of 
getting her there once in a way in the hope of overcoming her 
horror of the place as time goes by; and I have even gone out 
of my way to make changes in the furniture and decorations; 
so that the rooms should not look exactly the same as they 
looked in her fatal honey-moon; but I can see in her face that 
every corner of the house is haunted for her. Once when she 
had been calm and cheerful with me for a whole afternoon, 
walking about the garden and going from room to room, she 
flung herself into my arms suddenly, sobbing passionately. 

‘ We were so happy, mother,^ she said, ‘ so happy in this fatal 
house. ^ We must bear with her, poor girl. God has given 
her a dark lot. 

Theodore had seen an anxious, inquiring look in Juanita^s 
eyes from the beginning of his visit, which told him she want- 
ed to question him, and he took the first opportunity of being 
alone with her, while Lady Cheriton entertained Mr. Ramsay 
with an exposition of the merits of her grandson, unconscious 
of her praises, and slumbering in a hammock on the lawn, 
half smothered in embroidered coverlets and softest draperies. 

“ Have you found out anything?^^ she asked, eagerly, as 
soon as they were out of ear-shot. 

“ Yes, 1 believe I have really come upon a clew, and that 1 
may ultimately discover the murderer; but I can tell you no 
details as. yet, the whole thing is too vague. 

‘‘ How clever of you to succeed where the police have utterly 
failed! Oh, Theodore, you can not imagine how I shall value 
you — how deeply grateful — 

“ 8top, Juanita; for Heaven^s sake donT praise me. I 
may be chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. 1 don’t suppose that any 
experienced detective would take, up such a clew as 1 am going 
to follow, only you have set me to do this thing, and it has 
become the business of my life to obey you. ” 

“ Yop are all that is good. Pray tell me everything you 
have discovered, however vague your ideas..niay he. ” 

No, Juanita, I can tell you nothing yet. You must trust 
me, dear. 1 am at best only on the threshold of a discovery. 
It may be long before I advance another step. Be content to 
know that I am not idle. ” 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


291 


She gave an impatient sigh. 

“ It is so hard to be kept in the dark/’ she said. “ I dream 
night after night that I myself am on the track of his mur- 
derer — sometimes that I meet him face to face — oh, the hid- 
eous, pallid face! — the face of a man who has been hanged and 
brought to life again. It is always the same kind of face — the 
same dull, livid hue — though it differs as to features — though 
the man is never the same. You can not imagine the agony 
of those dreams, Theodore. Lay that ghost for me, if you 
can. Make my life peaceful, though it can never be happy. ” 

“ Never is a long word, Nita. As the years go by your 
child’s love will give life a new color. ” 

Yes, he is very dear. He has crept into my heart, little, 
nestling, unconscious thing — knowing nothing of my love or 
my sorrow, and yet seeming to comfort me. I sometimes 
think my darling’s spirit looks out of those clear eyes. They 
seem so full of thought — of thought far beyond human wis- 
dom.” 

Theodore could see that the work of healing was being done, 
slowly but surely. The gracious influence of a new love was 
being exercised, and the frozen heart was reviving to life and 
warmth under the soft touch of those baby fingers. He saw 
his cousin smile with something of the old brightness as she 
stood by while Outhbert Ramsay dandled the little lord of Car- 
michael Priory in’ his great strong arms, smiling down at the 
tiny pink face in a cloud of lace and muslin. 

Any one can see that Mr. Ramsay is fond of children,” 
said Lady Oheriton, approvingly, as if a liking for infants just 
short-coated were the noblest virtue of manhood. 

“Oh, I am fond enough of the little beggars,” answered 
Cuthbert, lightly. “ All the gutter brats about St. Thomas’s 
know Hie, and hang on to my coat-tails as I go by. I like to 
look at a child’s face — those old shrewd London faces especially 
■ — and speculate upon the life that lies before those younglings 
— the things those eyes are to see, the words those lips are to 
speak. Lffe is such a tremendous mystery, don’t you know — 
one can never be tired of wondering about it. But this fellow 
is going to be very happy, and a great man in the land. He 
is going to belong to the new order, the order of rich who go 
through life shoulder to shoulder with the poor, the redressers 
of wrong, the adjusters of social levels.” 

“ I hope you are not a socialist, Mr. Ramsay,” said Lady 
Oheriton, with an alarmed air. 

“ Not much; but I acknowledge that there are points where 
my ideas touch the boundary-line of socialism. I don’t want 


292 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


impossibilities. I have no dream of a day when there shall be 
no more millionaires, no great patrons of art or great employ- 
ers of labor, but only a dead level of small means and shabby 
dwellings, and sordid colorless lines. No, there must be but- 
terflies as well as ants — if it were only that the ants may have 
something pretty to look at. What I should like to see is a 
stronger bond of friendship and sympathy between the two 
classes — a real knowledge and understanding of each other 
between rich and poor, and the twin demons Patronage and 
Sycophancy exorcised for ever and ever. 

The tea-tables were brought out upon the lawn by this 
time; Sir Godfrey Carmichael was carried ofl by his nurse; 
a!id the two young men sat down with Lady Oheriton and her 
daughter under the tree beneath which Juanita and her hus- 
b.'uid had sat on that one blissful day which they had spent 
together at the Priory as man and wife. They seemed a very 
clieery and pleasant quartet as they sat in the sultry afternoon 
atmosphere, with the level lawn and flower-beds stretching be- 
fore them, and the great belt of the old timber shutting'out all 
the world beyond. Cuthbert Kamsay was the chief talker, 
full of animal spirits, launching the wildest paradoxes, the 
most unorthodox opinions. The very sound of his strong full 
voice, the very ring of his buoyant laugh, were enough to 
banish gloomy thoughts and sad memories. 

Lady Oheriton was delighted with this new acquaintance; 
first, because he was dexterous in handling a baby; next, on 
the score of general’**merits. She was not a deeply read per- 
son, but she had a profound respect for culture in other peo- 
ple; and she had an idea that a scientific man was a creature 
apart, belonging to a loftier world than that which she and 
her friends inhabited. Theodore had told her of his friend ^s 
claim to distinction, his hard work in several cities, and seeing 
this earnest worker boyish and light-hearted, interested in the 
most frivolous subjects, she was lost in wonder at his conde- 
scension. 

She begged him to go to Oheriton with Theodore at the 
earliest opportunity, an invitation which he accepted gladly. 

“ I have long wished to know Lord Oheriton,"" he said. ’ 

The two young men left soon after tea. Cutlibert"s high 
spirits deserted him at the Priory gates, and both men were 
thoughtful during the homeward drive. 

“Well, Outhbert, what do you think of my cousin, now 
that you have seen her?"" Theodore asked, when he had driven 
the first mile. 

“I can only agree with you, my dear fellow. She is a very 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


293 


lovely woman. I think there could hardly be two opinions 
upon that point. 

“ And do you think — as 1 do — that it is hopeless for any 
man to spend his life in worshiping her? Do you think her 
heart is buried with her dead husband?” 

“ Only as Proserpine was buried with Pluto. It is not in 
human nature for so youug a woman to wear her weeds for a 
life-time. The hour of revival must come sooner or later. 
She has too bright and quick an intellect to submit to the 
monotony of an inconsolable sorrow. Her energy expends 
itself now in the desire to avengo her husband^s death. Fail- 
ing in that, her restless spirit will seek some new outlet. She 
is beginning to be interested in her child. As that interest 
grows with the child^s growth, her horizon will widen. And 
then, when she has discovered that life can still be beau- 
tiful, her heart will become accessible to a new love. The 
cure and the change, the awakening from death to life, may 
be slower than it is in most such cases, because this woman is 
the essence of sincerity, and all her feelings lie deep. But the 
awakening will come — you may be sure of that. Wait for it, 
Theodore; contain your soul in patience.” 

“ You can afford to be philosophical,” said his friend, with 
a sigh. “ You are not in love. ” 

‘°True, Theodore. No doubt that makes a difference,” 


CHAPTER XXIL 

** And one, an English home — gray twilight poured 
On dewy pastures, dewy trees, 

Softer than sleep— all things in order stored, 

A haunt of ancient Peace.” 

I’heodore and his friend betook themselves to Cheriton 
Chase on the following Friday for that kind of visit which 
north country people describe as “ a week end. ” They car- 
ried their portmanteaus in that portion of the dog-cart which 
is more legitimately oQcupied by a leash of spaniels or Irish 
setters, and they arrived in the golden light of afternoon, just 
When that sunk lane approaching the west gate was looking its 
loveliest. Hart^s-tongue fern and rocky bowlder, polypodium 
and the great brown trunks of the oaks were all touched with 
sun-gleams, while evening shadows lay soft and cool upon the 
ripe flowering grasses in the meadows on either side of the 
deep gully. 

“ That is Mrs. Porter's cottage,” said Theodore, indicating 
the gate-keeper's house with a turn of his whip toward the end 


294 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


of the laue where the clustered chimney showed through a gap 
in the trees. 

Eamsay had been introduced to Miss Newton, and had con- 
stituted himself honorary surgeon and medical adviser to that 
lady and all her humble friends. He had been invited to the 
tea-parties in Wedge wood Street, and had interested himself in 
the young woman called Marian, and in his friend^s belief in 
her identity with the lodge-keeper ^s missing daughter, and he 
had a keen desire to make the lodge-keeper^s acquaintance. 

“From your account of the lady, she must be human 
adamant, he said. “ I like to tackle that kind of indiv^idual. 
I’ve met a few of them, and I’m happy to say that if I haven’t 
been able to melt them, I’ve generally succeeded in making 
them smart. I should enjoy exhibiting my moral aquafortis 
in the case of this lady. I shall get you to take me to make a 
morning call upon her while we are at Cheriton. ” 

“ My dear Outhbert, I would sooner call, uninvited and 
without credentials, upon the Archbishop of Canterbury. I 
don’t forget how she froze me. when I tried to be friendly with 
her last New-year’s-day. She was more biting than the 
north-east wind that was curdling the ponds in the park.” 

“ A fig for her bitingness! Do you suppose I mind? If 
you won’t take me to her I shall go by myself. A character of 
that kind has an irresistible fascination for me. I would go a 
hundred miles any day to see a bitter, bad woman. ” 

“ She is bitter enough, but she may not be bad. She may 
be only a creature who mistakes fanaticism for religion, who 
has so misread her Bible^ that she thinks it a duty to shut her 
heart against a beloved child rather than to forgive a sinner. 
I believe she is to be pitied rather than blamed, odious as she 
may seem. ” 

“ Very likely. A hard heart, or an obstinate temper, is a 
disease like other diseases. One ought to be very sorry for the 
sufferer. But this woman has a strong character, anyhow, 
for good or evil, and I delight in studying character. The 
average man and woman is so colorless a being, that there is 
infinite relief in the study of any temperament that touches 
the extreme. Think how delightful it would be to meet such 
a man as lago or Othello; picture to yourself the pleasure of 
watching the gradual unfolding of such a mind as lachimo’s, 
and consider how keen would be one’s interest in getting to the 
bottom of a woman like the poisoning step-mother, whose 
name I for the moment forget! So this is the lodge — charm- 
ing Early English cottage— real rustic English, not Bedford 
Parkish — half-timbered, thatched gables, dormers like eyes 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


295 


under bushy eyebrows; walls four feet thick; lattices two hun- 
dred years old. It might be the very cottage in which Grand- 
mamma Wolf waited for the dear, plump little girl, with 
chubby cheeks shining like the butter in her basket, and with 
lips as sweet as her honey. Poor little girl!^^ 

The servant-maid ran down the* steps to open the gate, and 
as the wheels stopped an upper casement swung suddenly 
open, and a woman^’s face appeared in the golden light— a 
pale, wan fac§ — whose most noticeable expression was a look 
of infinite weariness. 

“ Anaemic, said Cuthbert, as they drove in at the gate; 
“ decidedly anaemic. I should suspect that woman — 

“ Of what?^^ 

“ Of being a vegetarian,^' answered Cuthbert, gravely. 
“ But I'll look her up to-morrow, and find out all about her." 

Lord Cheriton received his kinsman's friend with marked 
cordiality, and seemeS. to enjoy his freshness and spontaneity. 
They talked of Cambridge — the Cambridge of forty years ago, 
and the Cambridge of to-day; and they talked of the conti- 
nental schools of medicine, a subject in which the lawyer was 
warmly interested. There were no other visitors expected be- 
fore September, when three old friends of Lord Cheriton were 
to shoot the partridges. In October there was to be a large 
party 'for the pheasant-shooting, which was the chief glory of 
Cheriton Chase. There had been no shooters at the chase last 
year, and Lord Cheriton felt himself so much the more con- 
strained to hospitality. " 

“ You fellows must come in October, when we have oiir big 
shoot," he said; but Cuthbert Eamsay told him that he must 
be at work again in London before the end of September. 

Cuthbert was much impressed by the master of Cheriton 
Chase, and the grave and quiet dignity with which he carried 
fortunes that might have made a weaker man arrogant and 
self-assertive. It would seem as if scarcely anything were 
wanting to that prosperous career. Yet Cuthbert saw that his 
host was not free from a cloud of care. It was natural, per- 
haps, that he should feel the tragedy of his son-in-law's death 
as a lasting trouble, not to be shuffled off and forgotten when 
the conventional period of mourning was past. 

Theodore had some private talk with his cousin on the first 
evening of his visit, walking up and down the terrace, while 
Cuthbert was looking at the books in the library, under Lady 
Cheriton's guidance. He had it fully in his mind that the 
time would come when he would be obliged to take Lord 
Cheriton into his confidence, but he felt that time was still far 


296 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


ofi. Whenever the revelation came it must needs be infinitely 
painful to both, and deeply humiliating to the man whose 
hidden sin had brought desolation upon his innocent daughter, 
and untimely death upon the man whose fate had been linked 
with hers. It* was for his dishonor, for the wrongs infiicted 
by him that those two had made expiation. 

No, the time to be outspoken — the time to say, in the words 
of the prophet, “ Thou art the man — had not yet come. 
When it should come he would be prepared to act resolutely 
and fearlessly; but in the meantime he must needs go on work- 
ing in the dark. 

He remembered his last conversation with Lord Oheriton on 
that subject— remembered how Cheriton had said that he be- 
lieved Godfrey Carmichael incapable of a dishonorable action, 
incapable of having behaved cruelly to any woman. Had he 
who pronounced that judgment been guilty of dishonor? had 
he been cruel to the woman who sacrifif;ed herself for him? 
There are so many degrees in such wrong-doing! There is the 
sin of impulse; there is the deliberate betrayal, the coldly 
planned iniquity, the sin of the practiced seducer, who has re- 
duced seduction to a science, and who has no more heart or 
conscience than a machine. There is the sin of the generous 
man, who finds his feet caught in the web of circumstance; 
who begins, innocently enough, by pitying a neglected wife, 
and ends by betraying the neglectful husband. Theodore gave 
his kinsman credit for belonging to the category of generous 
sinners. Indeed, the fact that he had lived aloof from the 
world for many years, sharing the isolation of the Woman who 
loved him, was in itself evidence that he had not acted as a 
villain ; yet it was possible that when the final hour came, the 
hour for breaking those illicit bonds, the rupture may have 
been in somewise cruel; and the remembrance of that cruelty 
might be a burden upon the sinner’s conscience at this day. 
Such partings can never be without cruelty. The fact that 
one sinner is to marry and begin a new life, while the other 
sinner is to finish her days in a dishonored widowhood, is in 
itself a cruelty. She may submit as to a fate which she fore- 
saw dimly even in the hour of her fall; but she would be more 
than human if she did not think herself hardly used by the 
man who forsakes her. Nothing he can do to secure her 
worldly comfort, or to screen her from the^ world’s disdain, 
will take the sting out of that parting. The one fact remains, 
that her day is done. He has ceased to care for her, and he 
has begun to care for another. 

Nothing has occurred since I was here to throw any new 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


397 


light upon the murder, I suppose,^’ Theodore said, quietly, as 
they smoked their cigars, walking slowly up and down in the 
summer night. 

“ Nothing.-’^ 

‘‘ Did her ladyship tell you that I have met a girl in Lon- 
don whom 1 believe to be no other than Mercy Porter?^’ 

“ Yes, she told me something about that fancy of yours, for 
I take it to be nothing more than a fancy. The world is too 
wide for you and Mercy Porter to meet so easily. What was 
your ground for identifying her with the lodge- keeper's girl?" 

“ The lodge-keeper's girl?" There was something need- 
lessly contemptuous in the phrase, it seemed to Theodore; a 
studied disdain. 

“ It was she herself who suggested the idea, by her inquiries 
about Cheriton. She confessed to having come from this part 
of the world, and she has an air of refinement which shows 
that she does not belong to the peasant class. She is a very 
good pianist — plays with remarkable taste and feeling; and 
Lady Cheriton tells me that Mercy had a great talent for 
music. I have no doubt in my own mind that this young 
woman is Mercy Porter, and I think her mother ought to go 
to London and see her, even if she should not think fit to 
bring her back to the home she left. " 

“ Mrs. Porter is a woman of peculiar temper. The girl may 
be happier away from her. " 

“ Yes, that is very likely; but the mother ought to forgive. 
The penitent sinner, whose life for the last fevv years has been 
blameless, ought to feel that she is pardoned and at peace with 
her 'mother. I tried to approach the subject, but Mrs. Porter 
repelled me with an almost vindictive air; and I do not think 
it would be any good for me to plead for my poor friend 
again. If you or Lady Cheriton would talk to her — " 

“ I will get my wife to manage her. It is a matter in which 
a woman would have ipore influence than you or I. In the 
meantime, if there is anything I can do to make Mercy Por- 
ter's life easier, I shall be very glad to do it, for her father's 
sake. What is she doing for a living?"' 

“ She does fine needle- work. She lives in one small back 
room in Lambeth, and has only one friend in the world, and 
that friend happens to be a lady who once lived in this house." 

A lady who lived in this house!" exclaimed Lord Cheri- 
ton; “ who in Heaven’s name do you mean?" 

“ Miss Newton, who was governess to Miss Strangway nearly 
forty years ago. " 

“ What brought Miss Newton and you together?" 


398 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ That is rather a long story. I took some trouble to find 
the lady, in order to settle one question which had disturbed 
my cousin Juanita since her husband^s death. 

“ What question 

“ She was haunted by an idea that Sir Godfrey's murderer 
was one of the Strangways, and his murder an act of vengeance 
by some member of that banished race. It was in order to set 
this question at rest forever that 1 took some trouble to hunt 
out the history of Squire Strangway's two sons and only 
daughter. I traced them all three to their graves, and have 
been able to convince J uanita that they and their troubles were 
all at rest long before the time of her husband's murder." 

“ What could have put such a notion into her head?" 

“ Oh, it came naturally enough. It was only a develop- 
ment of Churton's idea of a vendetta." 

“ She was always full of famiies. Yes, 1 remember she 
used to say the house was haunted by the ghosts of the StraUg- 
ways. I really think she had a dim idea that I had injured 
that spendthrift race in buying the estate which they had wast- 
ed. And so to satisfy Juanita you took the trouble to ferret out 
Miss Newton? Upon my word, Theodore, your conduct is 
more quixotic than I could have believed of any young man in 
the nineteenth century. And pray, by what means did you 
discover the ci-devant governess?" 

Theodore told the story of his visit to the scholastic agen- 
cies, his journey to the lake district, and his friendly reception 
by Miss Newton in her Lambeth lodgings. 

“ IShe was much attached to Miss Strangway, who was her 
first charge, and near enough to her own age to be more of a 
companion than a pupil," he saij, “ and she spoke of her 
melancholy fate with great tenderness. " 

“ It was a melancholy fate, was it? I know she made a 
runaway marriage; but in what way was her fate sadder than 
the common destiny of a spendthrift's daughter — a girl who 
has been reared in extravagance and self-indulgence, and who 
finds herself face to face with penury in the bloom of her 
womanhood?" 

“ That in itself would be sad, but Miss Strangway's destiny 
was sadder than that; commonplace enough, no doubt — only 
the old story of an unhappy marriage and a runaway wife. " 

He could not help looking at Lord Oheriton at this point, 
thinking how this common story of an unfaithful wife must 
needs remind his kinsman of that other story of another wife 
which had influenced his early manhood. He must surely 


THE DAY WILL COME. 299 

have a sensitive shrinking from the discussion of any similar 
story. 

“ She ran away from her husband! Yes, I remember hav- 
ing heard as much. What did Miss Newton know about her 
beyond that one fact?^^ 

Very little; only that she died at Boulogne nearly twenty 
years ago. This fact Miss Newton heard from the lips of the 
man for whom Mrs. Darcy left her husband. 1 had been at 
Boulogne a week or so before 1 saw Miss Newton, and I had 
hunted there for any record of Mrs. Darcy^s death, without 
result. But this is not very strange, as it is quite likely that 
she lived at Boulogne under an assumed name, and was buried 
in that name, and so lies there, in a foreign land, dissevered 
forever from any association with her name and kindred. 

“ There are not many of her kindred left, I take it,’^ said 
Lord Cheriton. “ There seems to have been a blight upon 
that race for the last half century. But, now, tell me about 
some one in whom 1 am more interested — the girl you believe 
to be Mercy Porter. I should be very glad to make her life 
happier, and so 1 told her ladyship. You, Theodore, might 
be the intermediary. I would allow her a hundred a year, 
which would enable her to live in some pretty country place — 
ill Devonshire or Cornwall, for instance, in some quiet sea- 
coast village, where no one would know anything about her or 
her story. 

A hundred a year! My dear Cheriton, that is a most 
generous offer. 

“No, no, there is no question of generosity. Her father 
was my friend, and I was under some obligation to him. And 
then the girl is my wife’s protegee; and, finally, 1 can very 
well afford it. I am almost a childless man, Theodore. My 
grandson 'will be rich enough when I am gone, rich enough to 
be sure of a peerage, I hope, so that there may be a Baron 
Cheriton when l am in the dust.” 

“You are very good. I believe this girl has a great deal 
of pride — the pride of a \Voman who has drunk the, cup of 
shame, and she may set herself against being a pensioner; but 
if the matter can be arranged as you wish she may yet see 
happier days. I think the first thing to be done is to reconcile 
mother and daughter. Mrs. Porter ought to go up to Lon- 
don — ” 

“ To see Miss Newton’s protegee? On no account. I tell 
you Mrs. Porter is a woman of strange temper; God knows 
how bitterly she might upbraid her daughter. And if the girl 
is proud, as you say she is, the mother’s reproaches would goad 


300 THE DAY WILL COME. 

her to refuse any help from me or my wife. No, Theodore, 
the longer we keep mother and daughter apart, the better for 
Mercy chances of happiness. 

“ But if this young woman should refuse to confess her iden- 
tity with Mercy Porter it will be impossible to benefit her. 

“ That difficulty may be easily overcome. You can take my 
wife to see her. She was always fond of my wife. ” 

“ And you will leave the mother out of the question. That 
seems rather hard upon her. 

“ I tell you, Theodore, it is better to leave the mother out 
of the question. She never acted the mother^s part to Mercy 
— there was never any real motherly love — at least that was 
Lady Cheriton^s opinion of the woman, and she had ample 
opportunity for judging, which, of course, I had not. If you 
want to help the daughter, keep the mother aloof from her.'’^ 

“ I dare say you are right, and I shall of course obey you 
implicitly, said Theodore, still inwardly reluctant. 

He had an exalted idea of maternal love, its obligations and 
privileges, and it seemed to him a hard thing to' come between 
a penitent daughter and a mother whose heart ought to be full 
of pity and pardon. Yet he remembered his brief interview 
with Mrs. Porter, and he could but own to himself that this 
might be an exceptional case. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

“ And from that time tp this I atn alone, 

And I shall be alone until I die.” 

Theodore and his friend strolled across the park after 
luncheon on Saturday in the direction of the west gate, Cuth- 
bert Ramsay intent upon carrying out his intention of intro- 
ducing himself to Mrs. Porter, and Theodore submitting 
meekly to be led, as it were, into the lion^s den. 

‘‘ You have no idea what hard stuff this woman is made of,'^ 
he said; and then he told Ramsay what Lord Cheriton had 
said to him about Mrs. Porter on the previous evening, and 
how the daughter's life was to be made happy, if possible, 
without reference to the mother. 

“ The harder she is the more 1 am interested in making her 
acquaintance,^^ replied Cuthbert. “ I donT care a jot about 
commonplace women, were they as lovely as Aphrodite. I go 
to see this soured widow as eagerly as Romeo scaled Juliet^s 
balcony. Did his lordship ever tell you what it was that soured 
the creature, by the way? That kind of hardness is generally 


THE DAY WILL COME. 301 

in some wise tlie result of circumstance, even where there is 
the adamantine quality in the original character. 

“ I never heard any details about the lady^s past life; only 
that her husband was in the merchant navy, upon the India 
and China line — that he died suddenly and left her penniless, 
that she was a lady by birth and education, and had married 
somewhat beneath her. I have often wondered how my cousin, 
as a barrister, came to be intimate with a captain in the mer- 
chant service. 

They were at the gates of the park by this time, and close 
to the rustic steps which led up to Mrs. Porter^s garden. It 
was one of those tropical days which often occur toward the 
end of August, and the clusters of scarlet poppies in the old- 
fashioned border, and the tall hollyhocks in the background, 
made patches of dazzling color in the bright white light, 
against which the cool grays of the stone cottage offered relief 
and repose to the eye. One side of the cottage was starred 
with passion-flowers, and on the other the great waxen chalices 
of the magnolia showed creamy-white against the brilliant 
scarlet of the trumpet-ash. It was the season at which Mrs. 
Porter ^s hermitage put on its gayest aspect, the crowning feast 
of bloom and color before the chilling breath of autumn 
brought rusty reds and pallid gray^ into the picture. 

The two young men heard voices as they approached the 
steps, and on looking upward, Theodore saw the curate and 
his wife standing on the little grass-plot with Mrs. Porter. 
There could hardly be a better opportunity for approaching 
her,, as she was caught in the act of receiving visitors, and 
could not deny herself. 

Mr. and Mrs. Kempster were young people, and of that 
social temperament which will make friends under the hardest 
conditions. Mr. Kempster belonged to the advanced Anglican 
school, and ministered the offices of the Church, as it were, 
with his life in his- hand, always prepared for the moment 
when he should come into collision with his bishop upon some 
question of posture or vestments. He had introduced startling 
innovations into the village church, and hoped to be able to 
paraphrase the boast of Augustus, and to say that he found 
Cheriton Evangelical and left it Eitualistic. Needless to say 
that while he gratified one half of his congregation he offended 
the other half, and that old-fashioned- parishoners complained 
of his “ gewgaws fetched from Aaron V old wardrobe or the 
flamen^s vestry.^" Mrs. Kempster had work enough to do in 
smoothing down the roughened furs of these antediluvians, 
which smoothing process she affected chiefly by a rigorous sys- 


S02 


ITHE DAY WILL COME. 


tern of polite afternoon calls, in which no inhabitant of the 
parish was forgotten, and an occasional small expenditure in 
the shape of* afternoon tea and half-penny buns toasted and 
buttered by her own fair hands. She was a bright, ^ood-tem- 
pered little woman, whom her husband generally spoke of as 
a ‘‘ body.'^^ 

The Kempsters had just accepted Mrs. Porter’s invitation 
to tea, and were making an admiring inspection of her garden 
before going into the cottage. 

“ I don’t believe any one in Oheriton parish has such roses 
as you, Mrs. Porter,” said the curate’s wife, gazing admiring- 
ly at the standard gloire de Dijon, which had grown into 
gigantic dimensions in the middle of the grass-plot. “ I never 
saw such a tree; but then, you see, you give your mind to your 
garden as none of us can.” 

“ I have very little else to think about, certainly,” said Mrs. 
Porter. 

‘‘ Except Algernon’s sermons. 1 know you appreciate 
them,” cried Mrs. Kempster, in her chirruping little voice. 

Algernon says no one listens as attentively as you do. ‘ She 
quite carries me away sometimes with that rapt look ol hers, ’ 
he said the other day. I am half inclined to feel jealous of 
you. Oh, here is Mr. Dalbrook. How d’ye do, Mr. Dal- 
brook?” 

Mrs. Kempster shook hands with Theodore before he could 
approach Mrs. Porter, but having got past this vivacious lady, 
he introduced Outhbert Eamsay to the mistress of the house. 

‘‘ My friend is a stranger in the neighborhood, Mrs. Por- 
ter,” he said, “ and he was so struck by the beauty of ‘your 
cottage yesterday that he set his heart upon being introduced 
to you, and I was really obliged to bring him.” 

“ My cottage is not generally considered a show place, Mr. 
Dalbrook,” she answered, coldly, turning her dull gray eyes full 
upon Theodore with a look which made him feel uncomfort- 
able, but I shall be very happy to show it to your friend — 
and his lordship’s friend, I conclude. ” 

“ I don’t know if I dare claim that distinction, Mrs. Por- 
ter,” answered Outhbert, in his cheerful, resonant voice. 
“ This is my first visit to the chase; and if Lord Oheriton has 
received me with open arms it is only because I am his kins- 
man’s friend. ” 

Theodore introduced the stranger to the Kempsters, who 
welcomed him eagerly, as one who came fraught with the in- 
terests and excitements of the outer world. 

“ May I ask if our man has got in for Southwark?” de- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 303 

niaiid(3d Mr. Kempster. “ His lordship would be sure to get 
a telegram after the polling. 

“ I blush to say that 1 forgot all about the election, and 
didn't ask after the telegram/' replied Cuthbert. “ When 
you say ‘ our man/ you mean — " 

The Conservative candidate. I conclude you belong 
to us." 

“ Again I blush to say I don't belong to you the least little 
bit. I am an advanced Liberal." 

Mr. Kempster sighed with a sigh that was almost a groan. 

“ A destroyer and disestablisher of everything that has made 
the glory of England since the days of the Heptarchy/' he 
said, plaintively. 

“ Well, yes, there have been a good many false gods top- 
pled over, and a good many groves of Baal cut down since the 
Saxon kings ruled over the seven kingdoms. You don't want 
Baal and the rest of them stuck up again, do you, Mr. Kemp- 
ster?" 

“ Mr. Kamsay, there are times and seasons when I would to 
God 1 could wake up in the morning and find myself a subject 
of King Alfred the Great. Yes, when 1 see the rising tide of 
anarchy — the advancing legions of unbelief — the upas-tree of 
sensual science," said Kempster, slipping airily from metaphor 
to metaphor, “ I would gladly lay hold upon all that was most 
rigid and uncompromising among the bulwarks of the past. I 
would belong to the Church of Wolsey and A Becket. 1 
would lie prostrate before the altar at which Saint Augustine 
was celebrant. I would grovel at the feet of Dunstan." 

“ Ah, Mr. Kempster, we can't go back. That's the plague 
of it, for romantic minds like yours. I am afraid we have 
done with the picturesque in religion and in everything else. 
We are children of light — of the fierce white light of science 
and common sense. We may regret the scenic darkness of 
medigevalism, but we can not go back to it. The clouds of 
ignorance and superstition have rolled away, and we stand out 
in the open, in the searching light of truth. We know what 
we are, and whom we serve. " 

At Mrs. Porter's invitation they all followed her into the 
cottage parlor, where the tea-table stood ready, and much 
more elegantly appointed than that modest board which the 
curate's wife was wont to spread for her friends. Here there 
appeared both old china and old silver, and the tea which Mrs. 
Porter's slender white hands dispensed was of as delicate an 
aroma as that choice Indian tea which Theodore occasionally 
enjoyed in Lady Oheriton's boudoir. 


804 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


Mrs. Porter placed herself with her back to the window, but 
Cuthbert^s keen eyes were able to note every change in her 
countenance as she listened to the conversation going on round 
her, or on rare occasions took part in it. He observed that 
she was curiously silent, and he was of opinion that Theodore^s 
presence was in some manner painful to her. She addressed 
him now and then, but with an effort which was evident to 
those studious eyes of Outhbert Ramsay, though ifr might 
escape any less keen observer. 

The conversation was of politics and of the outer world for 
the first ten minutes, and was obviously uninteresting to Mrs. 
Kempster, who fidgeted with her tea-spoon, made several at- 
tempts to speak, and had to wait her opportunity, but finally 
succeeded in engaging Theodore^s attention. 

“ Have you seen Lady Carmichael lately, Mr. Dalbrook?^^ 
she inquired. 

“ I saw her three days ago.^^ 

“ And how did you find her? In better spirits, I hope? 
She hardly ever comes to Cheriton now, and her old friends 
know very little about her. I am told she has a horror of the 
place, though she was once so fond of it — poor thing, it is very 
natural. You found an improvement in her, I hope?^^ 

“ Yes, I saw at least the beginning of improvement,^^ an- 
swered Theodore. “ Her child gives a new interest to her 
life.^^ 

“ What a blessing that is! And by and by she will meet 
some one else who will interest her even more than her baby, 
and she will marry again. She is too young to go on grieving 
forever. Don’t you think so, Mrs. 'Porter?” 

“ Yes, I suppose she will forget sooner or later. Most 
women have a faculty for forgetting.” 

“ Most women, but not all women,” said Outhbert, with his 
earnest air, which made the commonest words mean more 
from him than from other men, “ I do not think you would 
be the kind of woman to forget very quickly, Mrs. Porter.” 

She was in no hurry to notice this remark, but went on 
pouring out tea quietly for a minute or two before she replied. 

“ There is not much room in my life for forgetfulness,” she 
said, after that protracted pause. “ So without being in any 
way an exceptional person, I may lay claim to a good mem- 
ory.” 

‘‘She remembers her daughter, and yet memory does not 
soften her heart,” thought Theodore. “ With her, memory 
means implacability.” 

He looked round the room, in the flickering light of the 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


305 


sunshine that crept in between the bars of the Venetian shut- 
ters. He had not expected ever to be sitting at his ease in 
Mrs. Porter^s parlor after that unpromising conversation upon 
the first day of the year. He looked round the room, thought- 
fully contemplative of every detail in its arrangement which 
seemed to tell him what manner of woman Mrs. Porter was. 
He was not a close student of character, like Eamsay; he had 
made for himself no. scientific code of human expression in eye ^ 
and lip and head and hand; but it seemed to him always that 
the room in which a man or a woman lived gave a useful in- 
dication of that man^s or that woman’s mental qualities. 

This room testified that its mistress was a lady. The fur- 
niture was heterogeneous — shabby for the most part, from an 
upholsterer’s point of view, old-fashioned without being an- 
tique; but there was nevertheless a cachet upon every object 
which told that it had been chosen by a person of taste, from 
the tall Chippendale bureau which filled one corner of the 
room, to the dainty carved oak table which held the tea-tray. 
The ornaments were few, but they were old china, and china 
of some mark from the collector’s point of view; the draperies 
were of simplest Madras muslin, spotless, and fresh as a spring 
morning. Theodore noticed, however, that there were mo 
flowers in the vases, and none of thos^ scattered trifles which 
usually mark the presence of refined womanhood. The room 
would have had a bare and chilly aspect, lacking these things, 
if it had not been for the book-shelves, which filled every nook 
and corner, and which were packed with handsomely bound 
books. 

‘‘You have a nice library, Mrs. Porter,” he said, somewhat 
aimlessly, as he took a cup of tea from her hands. “ I sup- 
pose you are a great reader?” 

“ Yes, I read a great deal. I have my books and my gar- 
den.. Those make up my sum of life. ” 

“ May 1 look at your books?” 

“ If you like,” she answered, coldly. 

He went about the small, low room — so low, with its heavily 
timbered ceiling, that Outhbert Eamsay ’s head almost touched 
the cross-beams — and surveyed the collections of books in their 
different blocks. Whoever had so arranged them had exer- 
cised both taste and dexterity. Everything in the room fitted 
like a Chinese puzzle, and everything seemed to have been 
adapted to those few pieces of old furniture —the walnut-wood 
bureau, the oak table, and the old Italian chairs. The books 
were theological or metaphysical for the most part, but among 
them he found Carlyle’s “ Sartor Eesartus,” Past and Pres- 


306 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


ent/^ and ‘‘French Eevolution;” Bulwer^s mystical stories, 
and a few books upon magic, ancient and modern. 

“I see you have a fancy for the black art, Mrs. Porter,^'’ he 
said, lightly. “ One would hardly expect to find such books 
as these in the Isle of Purbeck.^^ 

“ 1 like to know what men and women have built their 
hopes upon in the ages that are gone,^’’ she answered. “ Those 
dreams may seem foolishness to us now, but they were very 
real to the dreamers, and there were some who dreamed on 
until the final slumber — the one dreamless sleep. ” 

This was the longest speech she had made since the young 
men entered her garden, and both were struck by this sudden 
gleam of animation. Even the large gray eyes brightened for 
a few moments, but only to fade again to that same dull, un- 
flinching gaze which made them more difiicult to meet than 
any other eyes Theodore Dalbrook had ever looked upon. 
That unflinching stare froze his blood; he felt the restraint 
and an embarrassment which no other woman had ever caused 
him. 

It was different with Cuthbert Ramsay. He was as much 
at his ease in Mrs. Porter ^s parlor as if he had known that lady 
all her life. He looked at her books without asking her per- 
mission. He moved about with a wonderful airiness of move- 
ment which never brought him into anybody's way. He fasci- 
nated Mrs. Kempster, and he subjugated her husband, and 
impressed everybody by that strong individuality which raises 
some men a head and* shoulders above the common herd. It 
would have been the same had there been a hundred people in 
the room instead of five. 

Mrs. Porter relapsed into silence, and the conversation was 
carried on chiefly by Cuthbert Ramsay and the curate, until 
Mrs. Kempster declared that she must be going, lest the chil- 
dren should be unhappy at her absence from their evening 
meal. 

“ I make a point of seeing them at their tea,^^ she said; 
“ and then they say their prayers to me before nurse puts 
them to bed — so prettily; and Laura sings a hymn with such 
a sweet little voice! I am sure she will be musical by and by, 
if it is only by the way she stands beside the piano and listens 
while I sing. And such an ear as that child has, as fine as a 
bird^s. You must come and hear her sing the evening hymn 
some day, Mrs. Porter, when you drop in to take a cup of 
tea. 

Mrs. Porter murmured something to the effect that she 
would be pleased to enjoy that privilege. 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


307 


“ Ah, but you never come to tea with me, though I am 
always asking you. I^m afraid you are not very fond of chil- 
dren. 

“1 am not used to them, and I don^t think that children 
like people who are out of the habit of associating with them,^' 
answered Mrs. Porter, deliberately. “ I never ,know what to 
say to a child. My life has been too grave and too solitary for 
me to be fit company for children. 

The curate and his wife took leave and went briskly down 
the steps to the lane, and Theodore made a little movement 
toward departure, but Cuthbert Kamsay lingered, as if he were 
really loath to go. 

“I am absolutely fascinated with your cottage, Mrs. Por- 
ter,'^ he said; “ it is an ideal abode, and I can fancy a lady of 
your studious habits being perfectly happy in this tranquil 
spot. ” 

“ The life suits me well enough, she answered, icily, 
‘‘ perhaps better than any other. 

‘‘You have a piano yonder, I see,^^ he said, glancing through 
the half-open door to an inner room, with a latticed window 
beyond which a sunlit garden on a bit of shelving ground 
sloped upward to the edge of the low\ hill-side, the garden 
melting into the luxuriant grass of a meadow, where cows 
were seen grazing against the western light. This second sit- 
ting-room was more humbly furnished than the parlor in 
which they had been taking tea, and its chief feature was a 
cottage piano, which stood diagonally between the lattice and 
the small fire-place. 

“ You too are musical, 1 conclude,^' pursued Cuthbert, 
“ like the little Miss Kempster.^^ 

“ I am very fond of music. * 

“ Might we be favored by hearing you play something 

“ 1 never play before people. I played tolerably once, per- 
haps — at least my master was good enough to say so. But 1 
play now only snatches of music, by fits and starts, as the 
humor seizes me. 

She seated herself by the casement with a resigned air, as 
much as to say, “ Are these young men never going?^^ Her 
nervous hands, with their long thin fingers, busied themselves 
in plucking a faded leaf now and then from the pelargoniums 
which made a bank of brilliant color on the broad window- 
ledge. 

“You were at home at the time of the murder, I suppose, 
Mrs. Porter?"^ said Cuthbert, after a pause, during which he 
had occupied himself in looking at some water-color sketches 


308 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


on the walls, insignificant enough, but good of their kind, andt 
arguing a cultivated taste in the person who collected them. 

“lam never away from home.^^ 

“ And you heard and saw nothing out of the common course 
— you have no suspicion of any one?^^ 

“ Do you suppose if I had it would not have been made 
known to the police immediately after the murder? Do you 
think I should hoard and treasure up a suspicion, or ^ a scrap 
of circumstantial evidence till you came to ask me for it?^^ she- 
said, with scarcely repressed irritation. 

“ Pray forgive me. I had no idea of offending you by my 
questibn. It is natural that any one coming to Cheriton Chase' 
for the first time should feel a morbid interest in that mys- 
terious murder. 

“ If you had heard it talked about as much as I have you' 
would be as weary of the subject as I am,^^ said Mrs. Porter, 
rather more courteously. “ I have discussed it with the local 
police and the London police, with his lordship, with the doc- 
tor, with Mr. Dalbrook^s father, with Lady Carmichael, with 
Lady Jane Carmichael, these having all a right to question 
me — and with a good many other people in the neighborhood 
who had no right to question me. I answer you as I answered' 
them. No, 1 saw nothing, I heard nothing on that fatal night,, 
nor in the week before that fatal night, nor at any period of 
Lady CarmichaePs honey-moon. Whoever the murderer was 
he did not come in a carriage and summon my servant to open 
the gate for him. The foot-path^ through the park is open all 
night. There was nothing to hinder a stranger coming in and 
going out; and the chances were a thousand to one, I fancy, 
against his being observed, once clear of the house. That is 
all I know about it. 

“ And as an old resident upon the property you have no 
knowledge of any one who had a grudge against Lord Cheriton 
or his daughter — such a feeling as might prompt the murder 
of the lady^s husband as a mode of retaliation upon the lady 
or her father?’^ 

“ I know no such person, and I have never considered the 
crime from such a point of view. It is too far-fetched a no- 
tion. 

“ Perhaps. Yet where a crime is apparently motiveless, 
the main-spring must be looked for below the surface. Only 
a far-fetched theory can serve in such a case. 

“ Shall I tell you what I think about the murder, Mr. Ram- 
say?'^ asked Mrs. Porter, looking up at him suddenly and fixing 
him with those steady gray eyes. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


309 


“ Pray do.^^ 

I think that no one upon God^s earth will ever know who 
fired that shot. Only at the Day of J udgment will the mur- 
derer stand revealed, and then the secret of the crime and the 
motive will stand forth written in fire upon the scroll that 
records men^s wrongs and sorrows and sins. You and I, and 
all of us, may read the story there, perhaps, in that day when 
we shall stand as shadows before the great white throne. 

“ 1 believe you are right, Mrs. Porter,*'’ answered Cuthbert, 
quietly, holding out his hand to take leave. ‘‘ A secret that 
has been kept for more than a year is likely to be kept till we 
are all in our graves. The murderer himself will be the one 
to tell it, perhaps. There are men who are proud of a bloody 
revenge, as if it were an heroic act. Good-day to you, Mrs. 
Porter, and many thanks for your friendly reception. 

He held the thin, cold hand in his own as he said this, look- 
ing earnestly at the pale, imperturbable face, and then he and 
Theodore left the cottage. 

“ Well, Cuthbert, what do you think of that woman 
asked Theodore, after they had passed through the gate, and 
into the quiet of the long glade, where the fallow-deer were 
browsing in the fading light. \ 

“ I think a good deal about her, but I hayen’t thought out 
my opinion yet. Has she ever been off her head?’^ 

“ Not to my knowledge. She has lived in that house for 
twenty years. I never heard that there was anything wrong 
with her mentally.’’ 

“ I believe there is something, or has been something very 
wrong. There is madness in that woman’s eye. It may be 
the indication of past trouble, or it may be a warning of an 
approaching disturbance. She is a woman who has suffered 
intensely, and who has acquired an abnormal power of self- 
restraint. I should like to know her history.” 

“ My God, Cuthbert,” criec? Theodore, grasping him by the 
arm, and coming suddenly to a stand-still, “ do you know 
what your words suggest, to what your conclusion points? The 
murder of my cousin’s husband was an act of vengeance or of 
lunacy. We have made up our minds about that, have we 
not? The detective, Juanita, you and I, everybody. We are 
looking for some wretch capable of a blindly malignant re- 
venge, or for homicidal madness, with its unreasoning thirst 
for blood ; and here, here at these gates is a woman whom you 
suspect of madness, a woman who could have had access to the 
gardens at any hour, who knew the habits and hours of the 
servants, who would know how to elude observation.” 


310 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ My dear fellow, you are going a great deal too far. Who 
said I suspected that unhappy woman of homicidal madness? 
The brain disease I suspect in Mrs. Porter is melancholia, the 
result of long years of self-restraint and solitude, the not un- 
frequent consequence of continuous brooding upon a secret 
grief. 


CHAPTEE XXIV. 

“ My eyes are dim with childish tears, 

My heart is idly stirred, 

Fot the same sound is in my ears 
Which in those days I heard.” 

That suggestion of Cuthbert Eamsay^s of latent madness 
in the lodge- keeper .came upon Theodore like a flash of lurid 
light, and gave a new color to all his thoughts. It was in 
vain that his friend reminded him of the wide distinction be- 
tween the fury of the homicidal lunatic and the settled melan- 
choly of a mind soured and jyarped by misfortune. After that 
conversation in the park he was haunted by Mrs. Porter’s im- 
age, and he found his mind distracted between two opposite 
ideas: one pointing to the man who had claimed Mrs. Danvers 
as his wife, the deserted and betrayed husband of James Dal- 
brook’s mistress; the other dwelling upon the image^of this 
woman living at his kinsman’s gate, with an existence which 
was unsatisfactorily explained by the scanty facts which he had 
been able to gather about her former history. 

He recalled her conduct about her daughter; her cold and 
almost vindictive rejection of the penitent sinner; her stern 
resolve to stand alone in the world. 

Was that madness, or the consciousness of guilt, or what? 
It was conduct too unnatural to be accounted for easily, con- 
sider it how he might. He had heard often enough of fathers 
refusing to be reconciled with erring or disobedient children. 
''J’'he flinty hardness of the father’s heart has become proverbial. 
But an unforgiving mother seems an anomaly in nature. 

He determined upon confiding Eamsay’s opinion and his 
own doubts to Lord Oheriton without delay. 

Whatever abnormal circumstances there had been in Mrs. 
Porter’s history, her benefactor was likely to be acquainted 
with them; and if those circumstances had affected her intel- 
lect, it was vital that he should be made aware of the fact be- 
fore evil of any kind could arise. 

He contrived an after-dinner stroll upon the terrace with 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


811 


his kinsman as upon the previous evening, and entered upon 
the subject without loss of time. 

“ Ramsay and 1 had an afternoon tea with Mrs. Porter,^’ 
he said. 

“Indeed! What took you there? She is not a sociable 
person in a general way, or accessible to strangers. 

‘ ‘ It was to gratify a fancy of Ramsay^s that I went there. 
He admired her cottage and was interested in her history, and 
took it into his head that she was a woman of exceptional 
character.'’^ 

“ He was not far wrong there, 1 believe. Mrs. Porter is a 
very hard nut to crack. 1 have never been able to fathom her. 

“ And yet, with your knowledge of her previous history, 
you must have the safest clew to her character. 

“ I don^t know about that. There is nothing exceptional 
in her history — and there is much that is exceptional- in her 
character, as your friend says. Pray, what was the result of 
his observation of the lady in the leisure of afternoon tea- 
drinking?’^ 

“He believed that he saw the traces of madness in her 
countenance and manner; madness either past, present, or 
impending. He could not decide which. ” 

There was not light enough upon th^ terrace to show Theo- 
dore any change in his cousin’s countenance, but the move- 
ment of Lord Cheriton’s hand as he took the cigar from his 
mouth and the sudden slackening of his pace were sufficient 
indications of troubled thought. It could hardly be pleasant 
for him to hear so melancholy a suggestion about the pensioner 
whom he had established in comfort at his gate, intending that 
she should enjoy that comfort for all the days of her life. 

“ Upon what does your friend base this fantastical notion?” 
he asked, angrily. 

“ Upon physiological and psychological evidence. You can 
question him, if you like. It appears to me that you ought to 
know the truth. ” v 

“ I have no objection to hear anything he may have to say, 
but it is very unlikely I shall be influenced by him. These 
young men, who are by way of being savants, are full of 
crotchets and theories. They look at every one as Darwin 
looked at a Virginia creeper or a cowslip, with a preconceived 
notion that they must And out something about him. I be- 
lieve Mrs. Porter, with her calm, impassible nature, is much 
better able to reckon up your friend Ramsay than he is able to 
come to a correct opinion about her.” 

“ I should like you to discuss the question with him, at any 


312 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


rate/^ said Theodore. The horror of last yearns calamity is 
a reason you should have nobody about the estate whom you 
can not trust. 

What do you mean?^^ 

“ 1 mean that while you have madness at your gate you may 
have murder in your house. 

“ Theodore! You can not be so cruel as to associate that 
unhappy woman with Godfrey CarmichaeTs death 

“ God knows! That murder has to be accounted for some- 
how. Can you, as Juanita^s father, know rest or peace, till it 
has been accounted for? I could not, in your place.'’'’ 

1 hope you do not think it necessary to teach me my duty 
to my daughter, said Lord Oheriton, coldly; and Theodore 
felt that he had said too much. 

His cousin addressed him upon some indifferent subject a 
minute or so afterward, when he had lighted a fresh cigar, 
and his manner resumed its usual friendliness. There was no 
further mention of Mrs. Porter that night, but on Sunday 
Lord Oheriton took the opportunity of walking home from 
church with Outhbert Ramsay, and questioned him as to his 
impressions about the lodge-keeper. 

“ Theodore has exaggerated the significance of my remark,^’ 
explained Outhbert. “ 1 take it Mrs. Porter^s case is one of 
slight aberration brought on by much brooding upon troubles, 
real or imaginary. If my power to diagnose is worth any- 
thing, her mind has lost its balance, her thoughts have lost 
their adjusting power. She is like a piece of mechanism that 
has got out of square and will only work one way. You may 
hardly consider that this amounts to madness, and I may have 
done wrong in speaking of it; only, were Mrs. Porter con- 
cerned in my existence, I should feel it incumbent on me to 
watch her; and I recommend you to have her watched, so far 
as it can be done without alarming or annoying her.’^ 

“ I will do what I can. I will get another opinion from a 
man of long experience in mental cases. I have an old friend 
in the medical profession, a specialist, who has made mental 
disease the study of his life. He will give me any advice I 
want.'’^ 

‘‘ You can not do better than get his opinion of Mrs. Porter, 
if you are interested in her welfare. 

‘ ‘ I am^ interested in all who are dependent upon me, and in 
her especially, on account of old associations.'’^ 

Lady Carmichael drove over to Oheriton after luncheon, 
upon one of those Sunday visits which she paid from time to 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


313 


time in deference to her father, albeit she could never approach 
the house without pain. She came in the useful family lan- 
dau, which had carried the Misses Carmichael to tennis-parties, 
dinners, and dances before they married, and which now con- 
veyed th# nurse and baby on their visits to Cheriton. She 
came for what Lady Cheriton called a long afternoon, and she 
was received in the library, which was now the most used room 
in the house. No one cared to occupy that fatal drawing- 
room; and although it was always accessible,'and there was a 
feint of daily occupation, its cold elegance was for the most 
part un tenanted. “ And over all there hung a cloud of fear.’^ 

To-day, for the first time, Theodore discovered numerous 
alterations in the arrangement of pictures and furniture in the 
hall. He had promised Cuthbert to show him the portraits of 
the Strangways, and most particularly that picture of the 
squire ^s three children,. painted nearly forty years before; but 
he found that this picture, among others, had been removed, 
and that a fine Ehodian plate occupied its place on the dark 
oak paneling. 

He mentioned the fact to his cousin. 

1 am sorry to miss the family group, he said. “ It was 
a really interesting picture. 

“ Interesting to you, perhaps, who knew the history of the 
race,^^ answered Lord Cheriton, ‘‘ but very uninteresting to 
a stranger. I think I've made an improvement over there. 
That plate is a splendid bit of color and lights up a dark cor- 
ner. But that was not my motive. I wanted to make such 
trifling alterations as would change the aspect of the hall for 
Juanita, without any ostensible refurnishing. I have done 
the same thing in the library. The changes there are slight, 
but the room is not as it was when she and her husband occu- 
pied it. 

“ I should like to show Eamsay the Strang way portraits^ if 
they are getatable.^^ 

“ They are not, just at present. The canvases were rot- 
ting, and 1 have sent them to London to be relined. You can 
show them to your friend by and by, when I get them back.^' 

Mr. Eamsay^s thoughts seemed a long way from the Strang- 
way portraits this afternoon, although he had expressed a curi- 
osity as to the lineaments of that luckless race. He was out 
in the garden — in Lady Cheriton^s rose garden — with J uanita 
and her son, and was giving further proofs of his adaptability 
to infantile society. The grandmother was of the party, look- 
ing on with profound admiration at that phase of awakening 
intellect which is described as “ taking notice. It was held 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


ai4 

now as an established fact that the infant Godfrey James Dal- 
brook took notice, and that his notice dwelt with-especial favor 
upon Outhbert Kamsay. 

I think it must be because you are so tall and b^,^’ said 
Juanita, lightly. “ He feels your power, and he wants to 
conciliate you.'’ ^ 

“ Artful little beggar! No, that is much too low a view. 
There is a magnetic affinity between us, love at first sight. 
AVhen babies do take a fancy they are thoroughly in earnest 
about it. Loafing about in the New Cut sometimes, studying 
human nature from the Saturday night point of view, I have 
had a poor woman’s baby take a fancy to me — a poor little 
elfin creature, ^ year old, perhaps, and not half so big as this 
bloated aristocrat, a sour-smelling baby which would give you 
mol ail emur, Lady Carmichael; and the wretched little waif 
would hook on to my elephantine finger and cleave to me as if 
1 were its mother. ^Oh, how sorry I have felt for such a baby 
— with the pure, starry eyes of infancy shining in the flabby, 
withered face that has grown old for want of cold water and 
fresh air. For such infancy and for stray dogs I have suffered 
acutest agonies of pity — and yet I have done nothing — only 
pitied and passed on. That is the worst of us. We can all 
pity, but we don’t act upon the divine impulse. You may be 
sure the Levite felt very sorry for the wounded traveler, though 
he did not see his way to helping him.” 

This was one of Cuthbert’s tirades, which he was wont to 
indulge in when he found himself in congenial society; and 
Juanita’s society was particularly congenial to him. He felt 
as if no other woman had ever sympathized with him or under- 
stood him — and he gave her credit for doing both. Never had 
he felt so happy in the society of any woman as- he felt in this 
sunlit garden to-day, among the roses which were just now 
blooming in a riotous luxuriance, the branching heads of 
standards topheavy with great balls of blossoms swayed gently 
in the summer wind. 

He had expected to see her a gloomy creature, self-conscious 
in her grief — but the child’s little fingers had loosened her 
heart-strings. If she was not gay, she was at least able to en- 
dure gayety in others. She listened to the young man’s 
rhapsodies and paradoxes with a gentle smile; she admired her 
mother’s roses; she cast no shadow upon the quiet happiness 
of the summer afternoon, that tranquil contentedness which 
belongs to the loveliness of Nature, and which makes a blessed 
pause in the story of human passion and human discontent. 
It was one of those summer afternoons which make one say to 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


315 


one’s self, Could life be always thus, what a blessed thing 
it were to live!” and then the sound of evening bells breaks 
the spell, and the shadows creep across the woods, and it is 
dinner-time, and all that halcyon peace is over. 

How lovely she looked in her simply made black gown, with 
its^ closely fitting bodice and straight, flowing skirt, of that 
thick, lusterless silk which falls in such statuesque folds. The 
plain little white crape cap seemed the most perfect coiffure 
and set off that raven hair and pure white forehead. She was 
unlike any other woman Outhbert Ramsay had ever known. 
There was not one touch of society slang, nor of the society 
manner of looking on life. She had passhd through the fiery 
ordeal of two London seasons unscorched in the furnace. 
Love had been the purifying influence. She had never lived 
upon the excitement of every-day pleasures and volatile loves, 
the intermittent fever of flirtations and entertainments that 
are on and off half a dozen times in a season. The influence 
th^ guided all her thoughts and all her actions had been one 
steadfast and single-minded love. She had cared for no 
praises but from her lover’s lips; she had dressed and danced, 
and played and sung, for none other th^ he. And now in 
her devotion to her child there was the same concentration and 
simplicity. She did not know that she wasjooking her love- 
liest in that severe black gown and white cap; she did not 
know that Outhbert Ramsay admired her far too much for his 
peace. She only felt that he was very sincere in his devotion 
to the baby, and that he was a clever young man whose society 
suggested new ideas and made her for the moment forgetful 
of her all-absorbing grief. 

It was evening before she left Cheriton. She had stayed 
much later than usual, and the shadows were creeping over 
the park as she walked to the west gate with Theodore and 
his friend, the carriage following slowly, with nurse and baby 
ensconced among light, fleecy wraps, lest vesper breezes should 
visit that human blossom too roughly. Theodore had proposed 
the walk across the park, and Juanita had assented immedi- 
ately. 

“lam always glad of a walk,” she said. “ I have so few 
excuses for a ramble nowadays. I have to stay at home to 
take care of baby.” 

“ Do you doubt the capabilities of that highly experienced 
nurse?” asked Ramsay, laughingly. 

“ I doubt every one but myself, and 1 sometimes doubt even 
my own discretion where my precious one is concerned.” 

“ You will have more reason to doubt by and by, when your 


S16 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


precious one is old enough to be spoiled/^ said Theodore. 
“ He has begun to take notice, and before very long he will 
notice that he is monarch of all he surveys, and that everybody 
about him is more or less his slave. He will live in that at- 
mosphere till you send him to Eton, and then he will find 
himself suddenly confronted with the hard, cruel world of 
strictly republican boyhood, which will jostle and hustle him 
with ruthless equality. ” 

Lady Cheriton had business in London early in the follow- 
ing week. {She was going to London to see her dentist and 
her dress-maker, the latter being one of the arbiters of fashion 
who never go out of their way to wait upon their clients, 
hut who do rather exact reverence and attention from those 
clients. She had shopping to do at the West End of London, 
that shopping which is so delightful to a lady who spends two 
thirds of the year in the country. ' Above all, she had things 
to get at the Stores, an institution which was dear to Lady 
Cheri ton’s heart, fn spite of all her husband’s lectures upon 
political economy and the necessity of sustaining private enter- 
prise and the shopkeeping interest. 

Hearing of these engagements, and that Lady Cheriton in- 
tended to' spend two nights in Yictoria Street, Theodore sug- 
gested that he should be allowed to accompany his cousin to 
London and to arrange a meeting between her and the young 
woman who called herself Marian Gray. 

“If you really wish to help her,” he concluded. 

“ I do really wish it,” answered Lord Cheriton, earnestly, 
“ and the sooner the matter is put in hand, the better pleased 
I shall be. Shall my wife call on this person?” 

“ She is very proud and very reserved. It might be better 
to bring about a meeting which would appear accidental. 
Marian goes for a long walk with Miss Newton once or twice 
a week. ^ I could arrange with her good friend that they should 
be walking in a particular place — Battersea Park, for instance 
—-at a certain hour, and Lady Cheriton could drive that way 
with me, and we could meet them. It would be the easiest 
way of arriving at the truth as to Marian Gray’s identity with 
Mercy Porter.” 

“ Very good. You might suggest that to my wife.” 

Lady Cheriton, who was the soul of good nature, fell in at 
once with Theodore’s idea. 

“ I would do anything in my power to help that poor girl,” 
she said, “ for I think her sadly to be pitied. Her girlhood 
was so dull and joyless— such a ceaseless round of lessons and 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


317 


practice, without any of those pleasures to which most school- 
girls look forward. Her mother seemed to take a pride in 
keeping the girl apart from every one, in dressing her plainly, 
and in making her whole life as hard as she, could. 1 hardly 
wonder that the poor, hopeless, creature surrendered to the 
first tempter — a man whose manner to women had always been 
■called irresistible, even by women of the world, and a man 
who would not shrink from any amount of falsehood in pur- 
suing his wicked aim. And now she is paying forfeit for her 
sin with a lonely life of toil in a London garret. Poor Mercy! 
;She was so pretty and so refined — a lady in all her instincts.-’^ 

Theodore went up to town with Lady Cheritou on the follow- 
ing Wednesday — Outhbert llamsay having left on Monday — 
promising to return at the end of the week. He went straight 
from the terminus to Wedge wood Street, where he saw Miss 
Newton, told her of Lord Oheriton^s benevolent intentions to 
Marian, alias Mercy, and arranged the walk in Battersea Park 
for the following afternoon. Miss Newton and her protegee 
were to be walking upon the path-way beside the river at half 
past three o^clock, when Lady Cheriton would drive that way. 
Miss Newton had no difficulty in carrying out her part of the 
little plot. Marian was always ready to put aside her work 
for the pleasure of an afternoon with that one friend to whom 
her heart was ever open. She met Miss Newton at the start- 
ing-place of the tram-car, and they rode through the dusty, 
crowded high- ways to the People’s Park, where the flower- 
beds were gaudy with the rank luxuriance that is the begin- 
ning of the end of summer^s good things, and where the gera- 
nium leaves were riddled by voracious slugs. There was a 
dustiness and worn-out air upon all the foliage and all the 
flowers, despite the coolness that came f roin the swiftly flow- 
ing river — an air of fading and decay which pervades even the 
outermost regions of London when the season is over and the 
world of fashion has fled — the aic of a theater when the play is 
done and the lights are extinguished. 

Sarah Newton and her young friend walked slowly along 
the gravel path-way, looking dreamily at the bright river, with 
its life and movement of passing «boats and flowing waters. 
The elder of the two friends, who was wont to be full of cheery 
talk of newspapers and books, the history of the present and , 
the history of the past, was to-day unusually grave and silent. 

“I’m afraid you are not well, dear Miss Newton,” said 
Marian, looking at her anxiously. 

“ Oh, yes, my dear, I am well enough. You know I am 
made of cast-iron, and, except for the toothache or a cold in 


318 


THE BAY WILL COME. 


my head, 1 hardly know what illness means. I am only a lit- 
tle thoughtful.-’^ 

They walked a few paces in silence, and then Miss Newton 
stopped suddenly to admire an approaching carriage. “ What 
a stylish victoria! Why, I declare, there is Mr. Dalbrook, 
with a lady!^^ 

I’he carriage drove up as she spoke, and Theodore alighted. 
Marian had reddened a little at the mention of his name, but 
the Hush upon her cheek deepened to crimson when she saw 
the lady in the carriage, and as the lady got out and came to- 
ward her the (irimson faded to a deadly white. 

“ Mercy, child, 1 am glad with all my heart to find you,^^ 
said Lady Cheriton, holding out her hand. 

She was determined that there should be no doubt in the 
young girTs mind as to her friendship and indulgence — that 
there should be nothing in the mode of her approach, in the 
tone dt her voice, or the expression of her countenance that 
could bruise that broken reed. Love and pity looked out of 
those lovely southern eyes, which even in mature age retained 
much of their youthful beauty. 

Mercy Porter went toward her, trembling, and with eyes 
brimming with tears. The calm, self -restrained nature had 
melted all at once at those gentle words in the kind, familiar 
voice which had praised and petted her years ago in her deso- 
late childhood. The transformation filled Theodore with 
wonder. 

“ Dear Lady Cheriton, I thought you would long ago have 
forgotten the wretched girl to whom you were once so kind,^^ 
she faltered. 

“ No, Mercy, 1 have never forgotten you. I have always 
been sorry — deeply sorry for you.. And when Mr. Dalbrook 
told me about having met a person who interested him — a 
person associated with Cheriton — I knew that person must be 
you. My dear girl, I thank God that we have found you. My 
cousin will call upon you to-morrow and talk to you about 
your future — and of our plans for making your life happier 
than it is. -” 

“ There is no need,"’ said Mercy, quickly, “I get on very 
well as 1 am. My life is quite good enough for me. I hope 
for nothing better, wish for nothing better. ” 

“Nonsense, Mercy. His lordship and I are your fr^ds, 
and we mean to help you.-” T 

“I will accept help from no one. Lady Cheriton. I made 
up my mind about that long ago. I can earn my own living 
very well now. If ever my fingers or my eyes fail me — I can 


THE DAY Will come. 


319 


got to the work-house. I am deeply thankful for your pity, 
for your sympathy— but 1 ask for no more, I will accept no 
more.^^ “ 

‘‘We will see about that, Mercy, said Lady Cheriton, with 
her gentle smile, quite unable to estimate the mental force in 
opposition to her. 

She could understand a certain resistance, the wounded pride 
of a sensitive nature painfully conscious of disgrace, unable to 
forget the past. She was prepared for a certain amount of 
difficulty in reconciling this proud nature to the acceptance of 
benefits, but she never for one moment contemplated an im- 
placable resistance. 

“ Let me see your friend, Mercy, she said, “ the lady who 
has been kind to you. 

“ Kind is a poor word. She has been my angel of deliver- 
ance. She has saved me from the great dismal swamp of self- 
abasement and despair. 

Miss Newton had walked briskly ahead with Theodore, so 
as to leave Lady Cheriton and Mercy together. Mercy ran 
after her friend, and brought her back a little way, as Lady 
Cheriton advanced to meet her. 

“ Miss Newton, my one true and good friend in all this great 
world of London, and the one friend of my miserable childhood. 
Lady Cheriton, said Mercy, looking from one to the other 
with that intent look of thoughtful minds that work in narrow 
grooves. 

“I thank you for being good to one in whose life I am 
warmly interested. Miss Newton, said Lady Cheriton. “ You 
have done the work of a good Samaritan,^ and at least one 
wounded heart blesses you.^° 

They walked on a little vvay together, and Lady Cheriton 
spoke of the old house and the^old family, the vanished race 
with which Sarah Newton had been associated in her girlhood. 

“ They are all dead, I understand?’^ 

“ Yes, there is none left of the old family. They are not a 
fortunate race, and I fear there are few who regret them; but 
I can not help feeling sorry that they are all gone. They 
have passed away Uke a dream when one awakeneth.” 

Lady Cheriton lingered on the river-side path-way for nearly 
hal^an hour, talking to Mercy and Miss Newton. T'heodore 
left^them together, after having obtained Mercy’s permission 
to call at her lodgings on the following afternoon. 


320 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

“ ‘ I saw her too.* 

* Yes, but you must not love her.’ 

* I will not, as you do; to worship her, 

As she is heavenly and a blessed goddess: 

I love her as a woman.’ ” 

A HECEKT- LOOKING woman opened the door of the house in 
Hercules Buildings, and ushered Mr. Halbrook up two flights 
of stairs to the small back room in which Mercy Porter had 
lived her lonely, friendless life from yearns end to yearns end. 
The perfect neatness and tasteful arrangement of that humble 
chamber struck Theodore at the first glance. He had seen 
such rooms at Cambridge, where an under-graduate of small 
means had striven to work wonders with a few shabby old 
sticks that had done duty for half a dozen other under-gradu- 
ates, and which had been but of poorest quMity when they 
issued, new and sticky with cheap varnish, from the emporium 
of a local upholsterer. 

Mercy was very pale, and, although she received her visitor 
with outward calmness, he could see that she had not yet re- 
covered from yesterday ^s agitation. 

“ What induced you to take so much trouble to betray me, 
Mr. Halbrook?’^ she asked. 

“ Betray is a very hard word. Miss Porter. 

“ You donT suppose that I believed yesterday’s meeting was 
accidental? You took the trouble to bring Lady Cheriton 
across my path in order to satisfy your curiosity about my 
identity. Was that generous?” 

“ God knows that it was meant in your best interests. I 
knew that Lady Cheriton was your true and loyal friend — that 
she had more of the mother’s instinct than your real mother, 
and that no pain could possibly come to you from any meeting 
with her. And then I had a very serious reason for bringing 
you together. It was absolutely necessary for me to make 
sure of your identity.” 

“ Why necessary? What can it matter to you who lam?” 

“ Everything. I am the bearer of a very generous offer 
from Lord Cheriton — and it was essential that 1 should make 
that offer to the right person. ” 

Mercy’s face underwent a startling change at the sound of 
Lord Cheriton’s name. She had been standing by the window 
iii a listless attitude, just where she had risen to receive her 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


321 


visitor. She drew herself suddenly to her fullest height, and 
looked at him with flushed cheeks and kindling eyes. 

“ I will accept no generosity from Lord Cheriton,^^ she 
said. “ I want nothing from him except to be let alone. I 
want nothing from Lady Cheriton except her sympathy, and 
I would rather have even that at a distance. You have done 
the greatest harm you could do me in bringing me face to face 
with my old life. 

“ Believe me, 1 had but one feeling, anxiety for your happi- 
ness."’^ 

“ What is. my happiness to you?” she retorted, almost 
fiercely. “ You are playing at philanthropy. You can do 
me no good — you may do me much evil. You see me con- 
tented with my life — accustomed to its hardships — happy in 
the possession of one true friend. Why come to me with 
officious ..offers of favors which I have never sought?” 

“ You are ungenerous and unjust. From the first hour of 
our acquaintance I saw that you were of a different clay to that 
of the women among whom 1 found you — different by educa- 
tion, instinct, associations, family history. How could 1 help 
being interested in one who stood thus apart? How could I 
help wanting to know more of so exceptional a life?” 

“ Yes, you were interested, as you might have been in any 
other wreck — in any derelict vessel stranded on a lonely shore, 
a picturesque object, battered, broken, empty, rudderless. 
It was a morbid interest, an interest in ruin and misery.” 

He stated his commission plainly and simply. He told her 
that it was Lord Oheriton’s earnest wish to provide for her 
future life— that he was ready, and even anxious to settle on 
her a sum of money which would insure her a comfortable in- 
come for the rest of her days. He urged upon her the con- 
sideration of the new happiness and larger oppprtunities of 
helping others, which this competence would afford her; but 
she cut him short with an impatient movement of her head. 

“ Upon what ground does he base his generous offer?” she 
asked, coldly. 

“ Upon the ground of his interest in your toother and your- 
self — an interest which it is only natural for him to feel in one 
who was brought up on his estate, and whose father was his 
friend. It may be also that he feels himself in some wise to 
blame for the great sorrow of your life.” 

“ Tell him that I appreciate his noble contempt for money, 
his readiness to shed the sunshine of his prosperity upon so 
remote an outcast as myself; but tell him also that I would 
rather starve to death,- slowly in this room, than I would ac- 
11 


332 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


cepL the price of a loaf of bread from his hands. Do not hesi- 
tate to tell him this, in the plainest form of speech. It is 
only right that he should know the exact measure of my feel- 
ings toward him. 

After this Theodore could only bow to her decision and 
leave her. 

“ Lord Oheriton is my cousin, and a man whom 1 have every 
reason to regard with affection and respect,^’ he began. 

She interrupted him sharply. 

“ He has never denied the cousinship — never treated you as 
the dirt under his feet — never looked down upon you from the 
altitude of his grandeur, with insufferable patronage—'’^ 

“Never. He has been most unaffectedly my friend ever 
since I can remember. 

“ Then you are right to think well of him — but you must 
let me have my opinion in peace, even although you .are of his 
blood, and I am — nothing to him. Good-bye. Forgive me if 
1 have been ungracious and ungrateful. I have no doubt you 
meant well by me — only I would so much rather be let alone. 
It did me no good to see Lady Oheriton yesterday. My heart 
was tortured by the memories her face recalled to me.^^ 

She gave him her hand, the thin white hand, with taper 
fingers worn by constant work. It was a very pretty hand, 
and it lay in his strong grasp to-day for the first time, so re- 
served had been her former greetings and farewells. He 
looked at the delicate hand for a moment or two before he let 
it go, and from the hand upward to the fair, finely cut face 
and the large dark gray eyes. That look of his startled her, 
the hollow cheeks flushed, and the eyelids fell beneath his 
steady gaze. / 

“Good-bye, Mercy, he said, gently; “let me call you 
Mercy, for the sake of the link between us — the link of com- 
mon recollections and the sad secrets of the past. 

“ Call me what you like. It is not very probable we shall 
meet often. 

“ You are very stubborn, cruel to yourself, and more cruel 
to those who waht to help you. Good-bye. 

“ Good-bye,'^ she echoed, almost in a whisper. 

He went out into the shabby street, haunted by those sad, 
uplifted eyes and the hollow cheeks faintly flushed with deli- 
cate bloom. How lovely she must have been in her dawning 
womanhood, and how closely she must have kept at home in 
the cottage by the west ^ate, seeing that he, who had been so 
frequent a guest at Oheriton, had never once met her there. 

He was not satisfied to submit to this total failure of his 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


323 


mission without one further effort. He went from Hercules 
Buildings to Wedgewood Street, and saw his admirable Sarah 
Newton, into whose attentive ear he poured the story of 
Mercy^s obstinacy. 

“ She is a strange girl — a girl Who could live in closest 
friendship with me all this time and never tell me the secret 
of her past life,’^ said Miss Newton, thoughtfully. ‘‘Why 
she should be so perverse in her refusal of Lord Oheriton^s 
offer I can^t imagine — but, you may depend, she has a reason. 

Theodore escorted Lady Cheriton back to Dorsetshire by the 
afternoon train, but they parted company at Wareham Sta- 
tion, he going on to Dorchester, where his sisters received him 
with some wonderment at his restlessness. 

“ It is rather a farce for you and Mr. Eamsay to make en- 
,gagements which you never mean to keep, said Sophia, 
peevishly, and it was thereupon expounded to him that he and 
his friend had pledged themselves to be present at a certain 
tennis-party upon the previous afternoon. 

“ I^’m very sorry we both forgot all about it, ” he apologized, 
“ but 1 donT suppose we were missed. 

“1 donT suppose you would have been, answered his 
sister, sulkily, “ if there had been half a dozen decent young 
men at the party; but, as Harrington preferred the office to 
our society or our friends, and as there were only three curates 
and one banker^s clerk at Mrs. Hazledean^s, you and Mr. 
Ramsay would have been something.^ ^ 

“It is hardly worth any man/s while to endure an after- 
noon’s boredom — to fetch and carry tea-cups in a sweltering 
sun, and play tennis upon an unlevel lawn if he is only to 
count for something, a mere makeweight.” 

“ Oh, you young men give yourselves such abominable airs 
nowadays,” retorted Sophy, with an air that implied that the 
young men of former generations' had been modesty incarnate. 
“ As for your friend, he has made a mere convenience of this 
house.” 

“ As how, Sophy?” 

“ I don’t think the fact requires explanation. First he goes 
to the Priory and then to Cheriton, and then he is off to Lon- 
don, and then Re is to be back on Saturday in order to lunch 
at the Priory on Sunday. If that is not making a hotel of 
your-iather’s house I don’t know what is.” 

“ Perhaps I have been too unceremonious, forgetting that I 
no longer live here, that it behooves me now, perhaps, to act 


324 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


in all things as a visitor. It was I who made the engage- 
ments, Sophy. You must not be angry with Ramsay. 

“ I am not angry. It can not matter to me how Mr. Ram- 
say treats this house; no doubt he thinks himself a great deal 
too clever for our society, although we are not quite so feather- 
headed as most girls. He finds metal more attractive at the 
Priory. 

“ What do you mean, Sophy 

“ That he is over head and ears in love with Juanita. It 
does not need a very penetrating person to discover that. 

“ What nonsense! Why, he has not seen her above three 
times. 

“ Quite enough or a young man of his vehement character. 

“ What can have put such an idea into your head?"” 

“ His way of talking about her — the expression of his face 
when he pronounces her name — the questions he asked me . 
about her, showing the keenest interest in even the silliest 
details. What kind of a girl was she before she married, and 
how long had she known Sir Godfrey before they were en- 
gaged, and had their love been a grand passion full of romance 
and poetry, or only a humdrum kind of afiection encouraged 
by their mutual relations? Idiotic questions of that kind 
could only be asked by a man who was in love. And then how 
eagerly he snapped at your suggestion that he should go with 
you to the Priory next Sunday. 

It may be as you think, Theodore answered, gravely. 

“ I know his fervid temperament about most things; but I 
did not think he was the kind of man to fall in love — upon 
such very slight provocation.^'’ 

“ She may have given him more encouragement than you 
suppose,'” said Sophy. “ He is the kind of man that a frivo- 
lous, half-educated girl would think attractive. She would 
never find out the want of depth under that arrogant, self- 
assured manner. However, she has asked Janet and me for 
next Sunday, and 1 shall soon see how the land lies. You 
were always unobservant.” 

Theodore did not try to vindicate his character as an ob- 
server, albeit he knew no look or tone of his cousin’^ was likely 
to escape him; that even sharp-eyed malevolence could never 
watch her more closely than love would watch out of his eyes. 

“Yes; it was not unlikely that Cuthbert admired her too 
much for his own peace. He recalled words which had passed 
unnoticed when they were together. Poor Cuthbert. He felt 
he had done wrong in exposing his friend to such an ordeal. 
Who could know her and not love her? 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


m 


CHAPTEK XXVL 

“ For life roust life, and blood must blood repay.” 

OuTHBERT Ramsay arrived at Dorchester on Saturday just 
in time to dress for dinner, and he contrived to make himself 
so agreeable to all the family in the course of that friendly 
meal that Janet and Sophia forgave him for his base desertion, 
and Harrington forgave him for being a great deal cleverer 
and happier than himself. He was in very high spirits — had 
been working hard in London — attending lectures — witnessing 
operations — and looking after those gratis patients in the 
slums who were his chief delight. 

“ I love to find out what life means below the surface,^’ he 
said. “ One only gets at realities when one comes face to face 
with the struggle for existence. The children — the poor, 
pinched atomies whom one looks at with a shudder, remem- 
bering that they are the men and women of the future. That 
is the terrible point — to think that in those little, half-starved 
faces one sees the men who are to meet in Trafalgar Square 
and unmake our smooth, easy world — to think that in those 
wizened morsels of humanity we have all the elements of dis- 
cord and destruction in the days to come. That is the appall- 
ing thought. 

“ It is a thought that should teach us our duty to them,^^ 
said Janet. 

“ What do you take that duty to be?^^ 

“ To educate them. 

“Educate — yes, educate them in the ways of -health and 
cleanliness — after we have fed them. That I take to be our 
primary duty to the children as much as, to the lower animals. 
You know the old adage. Miss Dalbrook, 7nens sana in corpore 
sano. Did you ever hear of a sound and healthy mind in aii 
unsound, scrofulous body? So long as we leave the little 
children to semi-starvation we are sacrificing to the Demon 
Scrofula, which is to our enlightened age what the Demon 
Leprosy was to those darker ages whose ignorance we prate 
about. 

“ 1 am not in favor of pauperizing the working classes,^’ 
said Harrington. 

“That idea of pauperism is a bugbear and a stumbling- 
block in the path of benevolence. Do you pauperize an agri- 
cultural laborer whose utmost wages are fifteen shillings a week 


m 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


if. you provide his children with two good meals of fresh 
meat in the seven days, and so grow better bone and 
sinew than can be produced upon bread and dripping, or bread 
and treacle. Do you pauperize a man by giving liim a free 
supply of pure water, and larger, airier rooms than his scanty 
wages will buy for him. To subsidize is not to pauperize, 
Mr. Dalbrook; and if England is to hold together upon the old 
lines during the coming centuries, the well-to-do will have to 
help the poor upon a stronger and wider basis than they have 
helped them in the past, and a good deal of the spare cash that 
is being spent on fine clothes and dinner-parties will have to 
be spent upon feeding and housing the million.^' 

The two young men drove over to Milbrook early on Sun- 
day morning, in order to attend morning service at the pictur- 
esque old church. Matthew Dalbrook and his daughters were 
to join them at the Priory in time for luncheon, which was to 
be a regular family party. 

Outhbert was silent for the greater part of the drive, and 
Theodore was thoughtfully observant ,of him. >Yes, there 
might be something in Sophy’s idea. More than once during 
that long drive the young man’s face brightened with a sudden 
smile, a smile of ineffable happiness, as of a dreaming lover 
who sees the gates of his earthly paradise opening, sees his 
mistress coming to meet him on the threshold. Theodore’s 
heart sunk at the thought that Sophia had hit upon the truth. 
Any way, there was hopelessness in the idea. If it were to be 
Theodore’s blessed fate to see the one love of his life victorious, 
sooner or later, after long patience and devoted sacrifice, 
Outhbert must taste the bitterness of having loved in vain. 
But he would hardly be worthy of pity, perhaps, seeing that he 
had known from the first how the land lay, seeing that honor 
forbade his falling in love with Juanita. 

But will honor make a man blind to beauty, deaf to the 
music of a voice, impervious to the subtle charms of all that is 
purest, best, and loveliest in womanhood? Theodore began to 
think that he had done wrong in bringing his friend within 
the influence of irresistible charms. 

“ I was a fool to think that he could help himself; 1 was a 
worse fool to suppose that she will ever care for me — the hum- 
drum cousin whom she has known all her life — the country 
solicitor whose image she has always associated with leases and 
bills of dilapidation — a little more than a bailiff, and a little 
less than a gentleman.” 

They disposed of the dog-cart to the village hostler, who was 
expiating the jovial self-indulgence of the Saturday night in 


THE DAY WILL COME. 




Uie j^eiiitential sleepiness of Sunday morning, and they were in 
their places in the gray old church when Lady Carmichael 
came to the chancel pew. Theodore^s watchful eyes followed 
her from her entrance in a halo of sunshine, which was sud- 
denly obscured as the curtain dropped behind her, to the 
moment when she bowed her head in prayer. He had seen 
her face brighten as she passed the pew where he and his 
friend were sitting, and he told himself that it was Outhbert^s 
presence which conjured up that happier light in her soft, 
dark eyes. On the walk from the church to the Priory it was 
with Cuthbertshe talked — Outhbert the irrepressible, who had 
so much to say that he must needs find listeners. It was 
Outhbert who sat next her at luncheon, and who engrossed her 
attention throughout the meal. It was Outhbert who went 
through the hot-houses, fern-houses, and green-houses with 
her after luncheon, and gave her practical lessons in botany 
and etymology as they went along, and who promised her some 
Austrian frogs. The day was one long triumph for Cutnbert 
Ramsay, and he gave himself up to the intoxication of the 
hour, as a drunkard surrenders to strong drink, unconditional- 
ly, without thought of the morrow. 

“ What do you think of your friend^s infatuation noiof” 
asked Sophia, with her most biting accent, as she and Theo- 
dore followed in the procession through the houses, she care- 
fully picking up her gown at every one of tho^e treacherous 
corner puddles which are to be found in the best-regulated hot- 
houses. “ Have you any doubt in your mind now?^’ 

No. I have no doubt. 

The carriages were at the door half an hour afterward, and 
all through the homeward drive Outhbert was silent as the 
grave. Only as they came into Dorchester did he-find speech 
to say: 

“ I shall have to go back to town early to-morrow morning, 
Theodore.'’^ 

“ So soon? What an unquiet spirit you are. You ^11 come 
back to us next Friday or Saturday, I hope?’^ 

“ I don’t know. Til try, but I’m rather afraid I can’t.” 

Theodore did not press the point, and his^Jriend kept his 
word >and' left by the first train on Monday morning, after 
having been intolerably stupid on Sunday evening, according 
to the sisters, who were disposed to think themselves especially 
ill-used by Mr. Ramsay’s obvious infatuation for Lady Car- 
michael. 

“ I was beginning to respect Juanita for her conduct in the 
difficult position of a young widow/'' said Sophia; “but I 


S2S 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


begin to fear that she is no better than the rest of them, and 
that her leaving off crape upon her last gowns is a sign that 
she means to marry again before the second year of her widow- 
hood is over. 

Lady Cheriton^s rose garden was in danger from a failure of 
the water in that old-fashioned well which had hitherto sup- 
plied the flower gardens. There had been an unusually long 
spell of dry weather since the beginning of July, and the 
gardeners were in despair. When Theodore went over to the 
chase with his portmanteau, in accordance with an engage- 
ment made the previous week, he found that Lord Cheriton 
had that morning given an order for the sinking of the Did 
well from twenty to thirty feet deeper. 

“ There is plenty of water, my lord,^^ said the head gardener, 
“ if we only go deep enough for it.-’^ 

Very well, Mackenzie, go as deep as you like, so long as 
you donT go below the water-bearing strata. You had better 
put on plenty of hands. Her ladyship is uneasy about her 
roses, seeing how you have been stinting them lately. 

“ It has been hard work, my lord, to do our duty by the 
roses and keep the lawns in decent order. The ground would 
be as hard as iron if we didnT use a good deal of water for the 
grass. 

“ Get to work, Mackenzie, and don’t waste time in talking 
about it. Drive over to Gadby’s, and tell him to send some 
good men.” 

This conversation took place upon the terrace directly after 
Theodore’s arrival; and when the gardener had gone off to the 
stables to get the dog-cart-of-all-work Lord Cheriton and his 
cousin walked in the direction of the well. 

The well was in one of the kitchen gardens, quite the oldest 
bit of garden ground at Cheriton, a square garden of about 
two acres, shut in with high, crumbling, old red-brick walls, 
upon which grew blue gages, and William pears, egg plums, 
and apricots, attaining more or less to perfection as the aspect 
favored them. It was a pleasant garden to dream in upon a 
summer afternoon, for there, was an air of superabundant 
growth that was almost tropical in the century-old espaliers, 
albeit they had long ceased to produce meritorious pears and 
apples, and in the sprawling leaves and yellow blossoms of the 
vegetable marrows which seemed to be grown for no purpose 
except to produce champion gourds or pumpkins, to be ulti- 
mately hung up as ornaments in the gardener’s cottage to 
rot in a corner of a green-house. There is always one old 


THE DAY WILL COME. 320 

green-house in such a garden given over to preserving spiders 
and accumulating rubbish. 

In the middle of a vegetable marrow warren stood the well 
— a well of eighteen feet in diameter, surrounded by a low 
brick wall, of that same bright- red brick which crumbled be- 
hind the blue gages and the egg plums, and in which the birds 
pecked great caverns for very wantonness. It was a well of 
the old pattern, with a ponderous wooden roller and an iron 
spindle, which had wound up water from those same cool 
depths for over a hundred years. It had run dry often, in the 
time of the Strang ways, that good old well; but no Strang way 
had ever thought of improving anything upon the estate, so in 
seasons of drought the flowers had drooped and the turf had 
withered unheeded by the proprietorial eye. 

Mr. Gadby's men appeared after their dinner hour, and got 
seriously to work bj about three o^clock, at which hour Theo- 
dore and Lady Oheriton were strolling in the rose garden after 
lunch, while the master of the house sat in the library, read- 
ing. Theodore had observed a .marked change in his cousin 
since his last visit to Oheriton. There was a worried look in 
Lord Cheriton^s face which had not been there even after the 
shock of the murder, a look of nervous apprehension which 
showed itself from time to time in a countenance^ where firm- 
ness of character and an absolute fearlessness had been hith- 
erto the strongest characteristics. 

He had not yet told his cousin the result of his interview 
with Mercy Porter. He had waited till an opportunity for 
quiet, confidential talk should come about naturally, and that 
opportunity now occurred. Lady Oheriton left him after half 
an hour’s sauntering inspection of the roses, and he went 
through the open window into the library, where Lord Cheri- 
ton sat in his large arm-chair at his own particular table, read- 
ing the political summing-up in the last “ Quarterly.” 

“ Shall I be disturbing you if I sit here?” asked Theodore, 
taking a volume from the table where the newest books were 
always to be found. 

“ On the contrary, I shall be very glad of a little conversa- 
tion. I have been struggling through an analysis of last ses- 
sion, which is all weariness and vexation of spirit.^ The session 
was dull, the commentary is duller. I am anxious to know 
how you got on with Mrs. Porter’s daughter.” 

Very badly, I regret to say, from our point of view. She 
utterly rejects your generous offer. Sh'e. prefers her present 
hard life, with its independence. She will accept no obligation 
from any one.” 


330 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ Humph! She must he a curious young woman/^ said 
Lord. Oheriton, with a vexed air. “ I should have liked very 
much to have made her life bright and easy if she would have 
let me-— for her father^s sake. On what ground did she refuse 
my offer?^^ 

“ On the ground of preferring to work for her living and to 
live a hard life. She has taken that upon herself, 1 believe, 
as an expiation for her past errors, although she did not say 
that in so many words. She is wonderfully firm. 1 never saw 
such a resolute temper in so young— and so gentle-mannered 
—a Woman. 

“ You tried to overcome her objections, you represented to 
her how easy and pleasant her life might be in some picturesque 
village — among the hills and lakes or by the sea — and how she 
might live among people who would know nothing of her past 
history, who would grow to care for her and be fond of her 
for her own sake?^^ 

“ I urged all this upon her. 1 am as anxious as you are 
that she should leave that dreary attic— that monotonous labor 
— but nothing I could say was of the least use. She was reso- 
lute — she would accept nothing from you.^'’ 

“ From me — ah, that is it!^^ cried Lord Oheriton, suddenly. 
“ Had the offer come from any one else she might have been 
less stubborn. But from me she will take nothing — not a loaf 
of bread if she were starving. That is the explanation of her 
hardness — it is to me she is adamant. Tell me the truth, 
Theodore. DonT spare my feelings. This girl hates me, I 
suppose?^^ 

“ I fear she has a deeply rooted prejudice against you. She 
may — most unjustly — blame you for her misery, because 
Colonel Tremaine was your friend. 

‘‘ Yes, that is her feeling, no doubt; it is on that account 
she hates me. Perhaps she is justified in her anger. 1 ought 
to have shot that scoundrel. Had I lived fifty years sooner I 
suppose 1 should have shot him. 

“ I donT think you could have been called upon to do that, 
even by the old code of honor. Mercy was not allied to 
you—’" 

No, but she dwelt at my gates. She was under my pro- 
tection — she had no other man living to defend her. 1 ought 
to have punished her seducer— it was incumbent on me to do 
it. Because there was no one else,” he added, slowly, after a 
long pause. 

“It may be on that account she rejects your generous offer. 
I can not say, but theye was certainly some strong personal 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


331 


prejirlice on her part. She was deeply moved. She burst 
into a passion of sobs. ‘ Not from him/ she cried, ‘ I will ac- 
cept nothing from him. Of all men upon this earth he shall 
be the last to help me!’ ” 

Lord Oheriton flung the “Quarterly” from him, with a 
passionate gesture, as he started to his feet and began to walk 
up and down the long, clear space in front of the five win- 
dows. 

“ Theodore,” he said, suddenly, “you have not yet come 
face to face with all the problems of life. Perhaps you have 
not yet found out how hard it is to help people. I would have 
given much to be able to help that girl — to assure her an easy 
and reputable existence — the requirements of life amid pleas- 
ant surroundings. What would it matter to me whether I 
allowed her one hundred or two hundred a year? All I desire 
is that her life should be happy. And of deliberate malice— 
of sheer perversity — she rejects my help, she dooms herself to 
the seamstress’s slavery, and to a garret in Xambeth. ^ My 
God, to think that with all the will and all the power to help 
her, I can not come between her and that sordid misery. It 
is hard, Theodore, it is very hard upon a man like me. There 
is nothing I hold of this world’s goods that I have not worked 
for honestly; and when I want to do good for others with what 
1 have won, I am barred by their folly. It is enough to make 
me mad.” 

Never before had Theodore seen this self-abandonment in his 
stately cousin, the man who bore in every tone and every gest- 
ure the impress of his acknowledged ascendency over his fel- 
low-men. To see such a man as this so completely unhinged 
by a woman’s perversity was a new thing to Theodore Dal- 
brook ; and his heart went out to his kinsman as it had never 
done before. 

“ My dear Oheriton, you have done all that was in your 
power to do for that mistaken young woman,” he said, hold- 
ing out his hand, which the elder man grasped warmly. 
“Whatever wrong you may have unwittingly brought about 
by the presence of a blackguard under your roof, you have 
done your best to atone for that wrong. The most sensitive, 
the most punctilious of men could do no more.” 

“ I thank you, Theodore, for your sympathy. Yes, I have 
done my best for her — you will bear witness to that.” 

“ A father could scarcely do more for an erring daughter. 
I only wish her mother felt half as kindly toward her as you, 
upon whom her claim is so slight.” 

“ No, no; it is a substantial claim. She is fatherless,^nd 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


;]32 

her mother is dependent upon me. I stand, as it were, in 
loco 'parentis. Well, we will say no more about her; she must 
go her own way. Only, if ever you find an opportunity of 
helping her — for me, you will do me a great favor by taking 
prompt advantage of it. 

“ 1 shall gladly do so. I am interested in her for her own 
sake, as well as for yours. 

“You are a good fellow, Theodore, and I know you wish 
us well. I will go„. a step further than that and say I knov/ 
that I can trust you. 

This was said with an earnestness which impressed Theo- 
dore. It seemed to him almost as if his kinsman foresaw that 
inevitable hour in which there must be perfect unreserve be- 
tween them — in which the younger man would have to say to 
his senior and superior in rank, “ I know the secret of your 
earlier years. 1 know the dark cloud that has overshadowed 
yourlife.’’^ 

They talked ‘ for a little while of indifferent subjects, and 
then Lord Oheriton proposed a stroll in the direction of the 
well. 

“ I should like to see whether those fellows have begun 
work,^"" he said. 

The old garden looked its sleepiest in the westering sun- 
light, but there was business going on there nevertheless, and 
a great heap of damp clay had been flung out by the side of 
the low brick parapet. Two men were at work below, and 
there were two men above, while a fifth, a foreman and lead- 
ing light, looked on and gave directions. 

“ Glad to see you\e tackled the job. Carter, said Lord 
Oheriton. 

“ Yes, my lord, weVe got on to it pretty well. Could 1 
have a word with your lordship?’^ 

“ Certainly, as many words as you like. How mysterious 
you look. Carter. There is nothing in your communication 
that Mr. Lalbrook is not to hear, I suppose 

“No, my lord, Mr. Dalbrook donT matter; but I thought 
you wouldn’t care for everybody to know, lest it should get 
round to her ladyship, and give her a scare. ” 

“ What are you driving at. Carter, with your ladyships and 
your scares? Have you seen a ghost at the bottom of the 
well?” 

“ No, my lord, but the men found this in the surface clay, 
and 1 thought it might have some bearing upon — last year — 
the murder.” 

He dropped out his words hesitatingly, as if he hardly dared 


TEE DAY WILL COME. 333 

approa.-li that ghastly theme, and then took something out ot 
his jacket pocket and handed it to Lord Oheriton. 

It was a Colt’s revolver, by no means of the newest make, 
rusted by lying long under water. The foreman had amused 
his leisure since the discovery in trying to rub ofl; the rust with 
a large cotton handkerchief assisted by his corduroy sleeve, 
and had succeeded in polishing a small silver plate upon the 
butt of the pistol so as to make the initials “ T. D.” engraved 
upon it easily decipherable. 

There was not much in the discovery, perhaps, but by the 
ghastly change in Lord Cheriton’s face Theodore saw that to 
him at least it appeared of supreme importance. His hand 
shook as it held the pistol; his ^yes had a- look of absolute hor- 
ror as they scrutinized it; and nothing could be more obvious 
than the effort with which he controlled hi^. agitation' and 
looked from the builder’s foreman to Theodore with an as- 
sumption of tranquillity. 

“ It may mean much, or nothing. Carter,” he said, putting 
the pistol in his coat pocket. “ It was quite right of you to 
bring the matter before me. ” 

“ I thought the initials on the pistol might lead to some- 
thing being found out, my lord,” said the foreman, who wished 
to make the most of his find. “ I don’t think there can be 
much doubt the murderer chucked it in there.” 

Don’t you? I have gone into the subject of circumstantial 
evidence a little deeper than you have, Carter; it was my trade, 
don’t you know? just as laying bricks was yours, and I can 
tell you that the odds are ten to one against this pistol having 
belonged to the murderer. Do you think it likely that the 
man who shot Sir Godfrey Carmichael would have gone out of 
his way to throw his pistol down that particular well?” 

I don’t know about that, my lord; it would have been a 
very safe hiding-place, if the water hadn’t given out — and it 
would be in his way if he were making for the west gate. He 
could hardly have taken a shorter cut than across thia gar- 
den.” 

“ Perhaps not — if both the garden doors are open at night. ” 

“ I don’t think anybody ever saw them shut, my lord, night 
or day,” answered Carter, with respectful persistency. 

Theodore knew by the very look of the clumsy wooden doors, 
pushed back against the old wall, with rusty hinges, and with 
the tendrils of vine or plum-tree growing. over their edges, 
that th§ man was right. The path across this garden and the 
next garden led in a direct line to the west lodge, and it was 


334 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


this way by which the servants went on most of their errands 
to the village. 

The one idea suggested by the choice of that hiding-place 
was that the person who threw away that pistol was familiar 
with the premises. The well was about thirty feet away from 
the path, and screaked o3 in some wise by the old espaliers. 
There was a gap in the espaliers whei-e an ancient and cankered 
apple-tree had been taken out, and it was by this opening that 
the gardeners generally went to draw water. They' had trod- 
den a hard foot track in their going and coming. 

It was always possible that a stranger exploring the grounds 
furtively and in haste might have been sharp, enough to hit 
upon the well as a safe and hajidy hiding-place. It would, of 
course, have been vital to the murderer to get rid of his weapon 
as soon as possible after the deed was done, lest he should be 
i-aken red-handed and with that piece of evidence upon him. 

Theodore saw in that pistol, with the initials “ T. con- 
irmatory evidence against the husband of Mrs. Danvers, the 
5ne person in the world who had good ground for an undying 
iatred of Lord Cheriton and his race. . He made no remark 
upon the discovery of the weapon, fearing to say too much; 
and he waited quietly to see how his kinsman would act in the 
matter. That ghastly change in Lord Oheriton’s countenance 
as he examined the pistol, suggested that he had come to the 
same conclusion as Theodore. Remorse and horror could 
hardly have been more plainly expressed by the human Oounte- 
nance, and what remorse could be more terrible than that of 
the man who saw the sin of his youth visited upon his innocent 
daughter. 

“ Shall you take any steps with reference to this discovery?^'’ 
asked Theodore, when they had gone half-way back to the 
kouse, in absolute silence. 

“ What steps can I take, do you think? Send for another 
London detective — or for the same man again — and give him 
this pistol? To what end? He would be no nearer finding 
the murderer because of the finding of the pistol. 

‘‘ The initials might lead to identification.^^ 

“ Did you never hear of such a thing as a second-hand pis- 
tol? And do you think an assassin would make use of a pistol 
with his own initials upon it to commit murder? I do not.^^ 

“ Not the professional assassin — but we are all agreed that 
this murder was an act of vengeance — for some reason at pres- 
ent unknown — and the semi-lunatic who would commit murder 
for such a motive would not be likely to do his work very 


THE DAY WILL COME. 335 

neatly. His brain would be fevered by passion or alcohol, in 
all probability, and he would go to work blindly. 

“ That is no more than a theory, my dear Theodore, and 
my experience has shown me that such theories are generally 
falsified by fact. The murder was so far neatly done that the 
murderer got clear off, in spite of a most rigorous search. I 
doubt if the pistol, with initials which may belong to anybody 
in the world, will help us to track him after more than a 
year. 

“ Then you mean to do nothing in the matter?^’ 

I think not. 1 can not see my way to doing anything at 
present— but if you like to take the pistol to Scotland Yard 
and see what impression it makes upon the expertg there — 

‘‘ I should ^luch like to do so. I can not ignore the fact 
that so long as Sjr Godfrey’s murderer remains Undiscovered, 
there is a possibility of peril for you and for Juanita, and for 
Juanita’s child. Who can tell whether that deadly hatred is 
appeased — whether the man who killed your daughter’s hus- 
band is not on the watch to kill you or your daughter — when 
he sees his opportunity?” 

“ As for myself, Theodore, 1 must take my chance. 1 would 
to God that the ball had struck me instead of Gbdfrey. Jt 
would have been better — a lighter chastisement. I have lived 
my life. I have done all 1 ever hoped to do in this world. A 
few years, more or less, could matter very little to me. . And 
yet life is sweet, Theodore, life is sweet! However heavily we 
are handicapped, we most of us would choose to finish our 
race.” 

There was infinite melancholy in his tone, the melancholy 
of a man who sees the shadows of a great despair darkening 
round him, the melancholy of a man who gives up the contest 
of life and feels that he is beaten. 

“ Do not say anything to my wife about this business,” he 
said; “ let her be happy as long as she can. She has not for- 
gotten last summer, but she is beginning to be something like 
what she was before that blow fell upon us. The advent of 
Juanita’s baby has worked wonders. There is something to 
look forward to in that child’s existence. Life is no longer a 
cul-de-sac.’^ 

There is one thing to be done,” said Theodore, after an 
interval of silence. “ The bullet was kept, of course.” 

“ Yes, it is in the possession of the police, I believe.” 

“ Would ^ not be well to ascertain if it fits the pistol you 
have in your ]30cket?” 


336 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“Yes. I will go to the station to-morrow and look into 
that.^^ 

There was no more said about the pistol that evening. 
Theodore felt that it would be cruelty to dwell upon the sub- 
ject, seeing that his kinsman had been deeply affected by the 
discovery, and that he was oppressed by a gloom which he 
strove in vain to shake off. 

It was evident to Theodore that those initials on the pistol 
had a fatal significance for Lord Cheriton, that he recognized 
in those initials the evidences of an injured husband revenge, 
the long-hoarded wrath of a dogged vindictiveness, a hatred 
which was inextinguishable by time. 

He told himself that the tardiness of that revenge might be 
accounted for by various contingencies, any one dS which would 
lessen the improbability of that long interval between the 
wrong done and the retribution exacted. It might be that the 
murderer had been an exile, a wanderer in a distant land. It 
might be that he had been a criminal, fretting himself against 
the bars of a felon^s prison, nursing his anger in the dull, dead 
days of penal servitude. \ Such things have been. 

It was clear to Theodore Dalbrook that in those initials upon 
the Colt’s revolver lay the clew to the murderer, and that 
Lord Cheriton shrunk with horror from the revelation which 
those two letters might bring about. Yet, whatever evil might 
come upon the master of Cheriton out of the secret past, it 
was vital that the murderer should be found, lest his second 
crime should be more hideous than his first, and Theodore was 
resolved that he would spare no effort in the endeavor to find 
him, living or dead. 

“ God grant that I may find a grave rather than the living 
man,” he thought, “ for Cheriton ’s sake. God grant that he 
may be spared the humiliation of having his story told to all 
the world.” 

He went into Cheriton village early upon tjie following after- 
noon, and dropped in upon the doctor, an old inhabitant, 
whose father and grandfather before him had prescribed for 
all the parish, rich and poor. Mr. Bogle, 'par excelU'nce, Dr. 
Bogle, was a bachelor, a spare, sharp-visaged man of about 
forty, social and expansive, a keen sportsman, and a good bil- 
liard-player, a man whose lines had been set in pleasant places, 
for he had inherited a roomy old cottage, with capacious 
stabling, and twenty acres of the fattest meadow-land in 
Cheriton parish, and he led exactly that kind of life which his 
soul loved. Ifc would have been actually no gait to such a 
man to have changed places with, Baron Rothschnd or Lord 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


337 


Salisbury. He would have been, in all that constitutes hu- 
man happiness, a loser by such an exchange. So cheery a 
person was naturally popular in a narrow world like Cheriton, 
and Mr. Bogle was a general favorite, a favorite in polite 
society, and in the billiard-room at the Cheriton Arms, which, 
in default of a club, served as the afternoon and evening 
rendezvous for lawyer, doctor, and the tenant-farmers of a 
gentlemanly class — the smock-frock farmers and tradespeople 
having their own particular meeting-placj at the Old House 
at Home, a small inn at the other end of the village. Theo- 
dore had known Mr. Bogle from his childhood, and the med- 
ical adviser of Cheriton was an occasional dropper-in at the 
luncheon-table in Oornhill, when business transactions with 
his tailor or his banker took him to the county town. There 
was nothing unusual, therefore, in Theodore^s afternoon call 
at the Dovecotes, a somewhat picturesque name which had 
been given to the doctor^s domicile by his predecessor, who had 
devoted his later years to an ardent cultivation of Barbs and 
Jacobins and other aristocratic birds, with prodigious wattles, 
and who had covered a quarter of an acre of garden ground 
with pigeon-houses of various construction. 

Theodore found Mr. Bogle smoking his afternoon pipe in 
the seclusion of his surgery. He had made a long morning 
round, had driven something between twenty and thirty miles, 
and considered himself entitled to what he called his otnim 
cum whisky and water, which refreshment stood on a small 
table at his elbow, while he lolled in his capacious easy-chair. 

He welcomed his visitor with effusion, and insisted on call- 
ing for another siphon, and having another little table ar- 
ranged at the elbow of the other easy-chair. 

“ Make yourself comfortable, old chap, and let us have a 
jaw,'’^ he said. I haven^t seen you for ages. Are you at 
the chase 

They talked of the^ usual village topics, glanced at the great 
world of politics, speculated upon the prospects of the shooting 
seasoii, and then Theodore approached the real business of his 
visit. 

“ There is a fellow 1 am interested in from a business point 
of view,^^ he began, “ who has been hanging about this place, 
off and on, for the last five-and-twenty years, I believe, though 
I have never happened tg meet him. He is a drinking man, 
and altogether a bad lot; but it is my business to hunt him 
down.^^ 

“ On accofant of some property, 1 suppose?^’ 

“ Yes, on account of some property. Now, I know what an 


338 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


observer you are. Bogle, wliat a wonderful memory you 
have — 

“I haven’t wasted it up in London,” interjected Bogle. 
“ A week in Oxford Street and the Strand would take ten 
years, off my memory. It’s pretty clear at present, thank 
God! Well, now, what about this fellow, what kind of a fel- 
low is he — a gentleman or a cad?” 

“ He was once a gentleman, but he may have tumbled pretty 
low by this time. He was going downhill at a good pace five- 
and-twenty years ago. ” 

“ Egad! then he must be at the bottom of the hill, I take 
ifc. What is he like — fat or lean, dark or fair, short or tall?” 

“ A tall man, fair complexion, a man who has once been 
handsome, a showy-looking man,” answered Theodore, quot- 
ing the house-agent. 

“ That will do; yes, just such a man as that was at the 
Arms one night — six — eight — upon my word I believe it must 
have been ten years ago. A man who put on a good deal of 
side, though his clothes were no end seedy — ragged edges to 
his trousers, don’t you know.^ — and though his hand shook like 
an aspen leaf. I played a fifty game with him, and I should 
say, though I beat him easy, that he had once been a fine 
player. He was in wretched form, poor creature! but — ” 

“ Ten years ago; do you really think it was as long ago you 
saw him?” 

“ I know it was. It would be in seventy -four, that was the 
year Potter was returned for Weymouth. I remember we were 
all talking of the election the night that fellow was there. 
Yes, I remember him perfectly, a tall, fair man, a wreck, but 
with the traces of former good looks. I fancy he must have 
been a soldier. He slept at the Arms that night, and I met 
him rather early next morning, before nine o’clock, coming 
away from the chase — met him within ten yards of the west 
lodge.” 

“ Did he talk about Lord Cheriton?” 

“ A good deal — talked rather wild, too — and would, have 
blackguarded your cousin if we hadn’t shut him up pretty 
sharply. He pretended to have been intimate with him before 
he made his way at the bar, and he talked in the venomous 
way a man who has been a failure very often does talk about 
a man who has been a success. It’s only human nature, I sup- 
pose. There’s a spice of venom in human nature.” 

“ Have you never seen this man at Cheriton since that occa^ 
sion — never within the last ten years?” 

“ Never, and I should be inclined, looking at the gentle- 


THE J)AY WILL CG.iE. 


339 


miin from a professional point of view, to believe that he must 
have been under the turf for a considerable portion of i hat 
period. 1 don^t think there could have been three years' . ilo 
in the man 1 played billiards with that evening. Hard lines 
for him, poor beggar, if there was property coming to him. 
He looked as if he wanted it bad enough." 

“ What had he been doing at the chase, do you suppose?" 

“ 1 haven't the least idea. I was driving in my cart when 
I passed him. I looked back and watched him for two or 
three minutes. He was walking very slowly, and with a lan- 
guid air, like a man who was not much used to walking. Ten 
years — no, Theodore— I don't think it's possible such a shaky 
subject as that could have lasted ten years. One certainly 
does see very miserable creatures crawling on for years after 
they have been ticketed for the undertaker — but this man — no 
— 1 don’t think he could hold out long *after that October 
morning. I fancy he was booked for a quick passage. " 

‘‘ He may have pulled himself together, and turned over a 
new leaf." 

“ Too old, and too far gone for that." 

“ Or what if he had done something bad and got himself 
shut up for a few years?" 

“ Penal servitude, do you mean? Well, that might do 
something. It's a very severe regimen for the habitual 
drunkard — and it means kill or cure. In this case, I should 
say, decidedly, kill." 

“ But it might cure." 

“ I should think the chances of cure were as two in two 
hundred. I won't say it would be impossible, not having ex- 
amined the patient — but, so far as observation can teach a man 
anything, observation taught me that the case was hopeless." 

“ And yet it is my belief that this man was at Oheriton 
some time last year. You know everybody^ and talk to every- 
body, my dear Bogle. I wish you'd find out for me whether 
1 am right. " 

‘‘ I'll do my best," answered Mr. Bogle, cheerfully. “ If 
the man has been seen by anybody in the village 1 ought to be 
able to hear about him. Everybody was tremendously on the 
cpd vivG last year after the murder, and no stranger could have 
escaped observation." 

“ Perhaps not — but before the murder — " 

‘‘ Anybody who had been seen shortly before the murder 
would have been remembered and talked about. You can 
have no idea of the intense excitement that event caused 


340 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


among us. We seemed to talk of nothing else and to think of 
]iothing else for months. 

“ And you suppose that if the man I want had been about 
— for a few hours only, just long enough to come and go away 
again — at about that time, he would have been observed and 
remembered?’^ 

“ I am sure of it. He would have inevitably been taken 
for the murderer. Remember, we were all on the alert, ready 
to fix the first suspicious-looking person with the crime.” 

“ Do you think Johnson would remember the man?” 

Johnson was the proprietor of the Cheriton Arms. 

“ My dear fellow, did you ever find Johnson’s memory 
available about any transaction six months old? Johnson’s 
memory is steeped in beer, buried in flesh. Johnson is a per- 
ambulating tower of forgetfulness— a circumambulatory hogs- 
head of stupidity. Ask Johnson to tell you the Christian 
name of his grandmother, and I would venture a new hat he 
would be unable to answer you. There is nothing to be got 
out of mine host of the Cheriton Arms. Be sure of that. ” 

“ I’m afraid you’re right,” said Theodore. 

He felt as if he had come to a point at which there was* no 
thoroughfare. There was the pistol, with the initials “ T. D.,” 
and he had made up his mind that the man for whom those 
initials had been engraved was the man who gave his name as 
Danvers when he called upon the house-agent, the man whose 
wife had been known for years as Mrs. Danvers. He had 
made up his mind that this man, and no other, had murdered 
Godfrey Carmichael — that many years after the wife’s death 
the husband had returned from exile or imprisonment, imbit- 
tored so much the more, so much the more vindictive, so much 
the more malignant, for all that he had suffered in that in- 
terval, and had taken the first opportunity to attack a hated 
liousehold. That ^Jie would strike again if he should be al- 
lowed to live and* be at large Theodore had no doubt. A 
second murder and a third murder seemed the natural 
sequence of the first. He remembered the murders of the 
Jermys at Stanfield Hall — the savage hatred which tried to 
slay four people, two of whom were utterly unconcerned with 
the wrong that called for vengeance. In the face of such a 
story as that of the murderer Kush, who could say that Theo- 
dore’s apprehension of an insatiable malignity, wreaking itself 
ill further bloodshed, was groundless? 

He left the Dovecotes disheartened, hardly knowing what 
his next step was to be, and very hopeless of tracking a man 
who had so contrived as to be unseen upon his deadly errand. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


341 


lie must have come and gone, verily, like a thief iji the night, 
sheltered by darkness, meeting no one; and yet there was the 
evidence of the servants at the inquest, who swore to having 
lieard mysterious footsteps outside the house late at night upon 
more than one occasion shortly before the murder. If the 
murderer had been about upon several nights, creeping round 
by the open windows of the reception-rooms, watching his op- 
portunity, what had he done with himself in the day? where 
had he hidden himself? how had he evaded the prying eyes of 
a village, which is all eyes, all ears, for the unexplained 
stranger? 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

“ When haughty expectations prostrate lie, 

And grandeur crouches like a guilty thing.” 

Theodore walked moodily along the lane leading to the 
west gate, brooding over discrepancies and difficulties in the 
case which he had set himself to unravel. As he drew near 
Mrs. Porter^s cottage he saw Lord Cheriton come out of the 
porch, unattended, and shutting the door behind him. He 
came slowly down the steps to the gate, with his head bent 
and his shoulders stooping wearily, an attitude which was 
totally unlike his usual erect carriage, an attitude which told 
distinctly of mental trouble. 

Theodore overtook him, and walked by his side, at the risk 
of being considered intrusive. He was very curious as to his 
kinsman’s motive in visiting Mrs. Porter, after yesterday’s 
conversation about Mercy. 

“ Have you been trying to bring about a reconciliation be- 
tween mother and daughter?” he asked. 

‘‘ No, I have told you that little good could result from 
bringing those two obstinate spirits together* You have seen 
for yourself what the daughter can be — how perverse, how 
cruel, what a creature of prejudice and whim. The mother’s 
nature is still harder. What good could come of bringing such 
a daughter back to such a mother? No, it was with no hope 
of reconciliation that I called upon Mrs. Porter. I have been 
thinking very seriously of your friend Ramsay’s suggestion of 
mental trouble. I regret that I did not act upon the hint 
sooner, and get my friend Man waring to see her, and advwe 
upon the case. I shall certainly consult him about her; but, 
as h,e has a very important practice and adarge establishment 
under his care, it may be very difficult for him to leave Lon- 


342 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


don. I think, therefore, it might be well to send her up to the 
neighborhood of London — to some quiet northern suburb, for 
instance, within half an hour's drive of Manwaring's asylum, 
which is near Edmonton— then, if it should be deemed ad- 
visable to place her under restraint for a time — though I can 
not suppose that likely — the business could be easily accom- 
plished." 

“ Your idea, then, would be; — " 

“ To take her up to London, with her servant^ as soon as I 
have found comfortable lodgings for her in a quiet neighbor- 
hood. I have proposed the journey to her this afternoon, on 
the ground of her being out of health and in need of special 
advice. I told her that people had remarked upon her altered 
appearance, and that I was anxious she should have the best 
medical care. She did not deny that she was ailing. 1 think, 
therefore, there will be very little difficulty in getting her away 
when 1 am ready to remove her. " 

“ What was your own impression as to her mental con- 
dition?" • ' 

“ 1 regret to say that; my impression very much resembled 
that of your friend. I saw a great change in her since I had 
last had any conversation with her. Yes, I fear that there is 
something amiss, and that it is no longer well for her to live in 
that cottage, with one young woman for her only protector 
and companion. It would be far better for her to be in a 
private asylum, where, hers being a very mild 'case, life might 
be made easy and agreeable for her. I know my friend Man- 
waring to be a man of infinite benevolence, and that there 
would be nothiug wanting to lighten her burden." 

He sighed heavily. There was a look in his face of unut- 
terable care, of a despondency which saw no issue, no ray of 
light far off in the thickening gloom. Theodore thought he 
looked aged by several years since yesterday, as if the evidence 
of the pistol had struck him to the heart. 

“ He knows now that it was his own sin that brought about 
this evil," thought Theodore. 

He could conceive the agony of the father's heart, knowing 
that for the wrong-doing of his own youth, his innocent 
daughter iiad been called upon to make so terrible an expia- 
tion. He could penetrate into the dark recesses of the sinner's 
mind, where remorse for that early error, and for all the false 
steps which it had necessitated, dominated every other thought. 
Till yesterday James Dalbrook might have supposed that sin 
a thing of the past, atoned for and forgiven— its evil conse- 
quences suffered in the past, the account ruled off in the book 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


of fate, and the acquittance given. To-day he knew that his 
sin had cost him his daughter's happiness; and over and above 
that horror of the past there lay before him the hazard of some 
still greater horror in the future. Could anybody wonder that 
his eyes were sunken and dull, as they never had been before 
within Theodore's memory.^ Could anybody wonder at the 
strained look in the broad, open forehead, beneath which the 
eyes looked out, wide apart, under strongly marked brows; or 
at the hard lines about the mouth, which told of sharpest 
mental pain? 

Late that evening, when Lady Cheriton had gone to bed, 
Theodore approached the subject of the pistol. 

‘‘ Did you compare the ball with the revolver that was found 
yesterday?" he asked. 

“Yes. The ball fits the bore. I don't know that the fact 
goes to prove much — but, so far as it goes, it is now in the 
knowledge of our local police. Unfortunately they are not 
the most brilliant intellects I know of." 

“ If you will let me have the pistol to-night before we go to 
bed, I will go up to toWn by an early train to-morrow and 
take it to Scotland Yard, as you suggested." 

‘ ‘ I suggested nothing of the kind, my dear Theodore. I 
attach very little importance to the discovery of the pistol as a 
means toward discovering the murderer. I said you might 
take it to Scotland Yard if you liked — that was all." 

" I should like to do so. I should feel better satisfied — " 

‘‘ Oh, satisfy yourself, by all means," interrupted Lord 
Cheriton, irritably. “ You are great upon the science of cir- 
cumstantial evidence. There is the pistol," taking it out of a 
drawer in the large writing-table. ‘‘ Do what you like with 
it." 

You are not offended with me, I hope?" 

No, I am only tired — tired of the whole business, and of 
the everlasting talk there has been about it.' If it is a ven- 
detta; if the hand that killed Godfrey Carmichael is to kill 
me and my daughter and her son— if my race is to be eradi- 
cated from the face of this earth by an unappeasable hatred, 
I can not help my fate. I can not parry the impending blow. 
Nor can you or Scotland Yard protect me from my foe, Theo- 
dore." 

“ Scotland Yard may find your foe, and lock him up." 

“ I doubt it. But do as you please. " 

T-heodore's train left Wareham at nine o'clock. There was 
a still earlier train at seven, by which farmers and other en- 


344 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


terprising spirits who wanted to take time by the forelock were 
accustomed to travel; but, to be in time for the nine o^clock 
train, Theodore had to leave Cheriton at a quarter to eight, 
and to drive to- the distant town in the dog-cart made and 
provided for station work and drawn by one of two smart cobs 
kept for the purpose. 

He left the park by the west gate. He had to wait longer 
than usual for the opening of the gate; and when the chubby- 
cheeked maid-servant came down the steps with a key in her 
hand and unlocked the gate, there was that in her manner 
which indicated a fluttered mind. 

“ Oh, if you please, sir, I’m sorry to keep you waiting so 
long, but I couldn’t find the key just at first, though I 
thought I’d hung it up on the nail last night after I locked 
the gate — but I was so upset at my mistress leaving so sudden- 
ly — never saying a word about it beforehand — that I hardly 
knew what I was doing.” 

Theodore stopped the groom as he drove through the gate. 
He had a few minutes to spare, and could afford himself time 
to question the girl, who had a look of desiring to be interro- 
gated. 

What is this about your mistress leaving suddenly?” he 
asked. “ Do you mean that Mrs. Porter has gone away — on 
a journey?” 

“Yes, indeed, sir. She that never left home before since I 
was a child — for I’ve known her ever since I can remember, 
and never knew her to be away for so much as a single night. 
And the first thing this morning, when I was lighting the 
kitchen fire, she opens the door and just looks in and says, 
‘ Martha, I’m going to London. Don’t expect me back till 
you see me. There’s a letter on the parlor table,’ she says. 

‘ Let it lie there till it’s called for — don’t you touch it, nor yet 
the box,’ and she shuts the kitchen door and walks off just as 
quietly as if she were going to early church, as she has done 
many a time before it was broad daylight. I was that upset 
that I knelt before the stove a good few minutes before I could 
realize that she was gone — and then I ran out and looked after 
her. She was almost out of sight, walking up the lane toward 
Cheriton. ” 

“ Had she no luggage? — did she take nothing with her?” 

“ Nothing. Not so much as a hand-bag.” 

“ What time was this?” 

“ It struck six a few minutes after I went back to the 
kitchen. ” 


THII DAY WILL COME. 


845 


about the letter — and the box your mistress spoke 

“ There they are, sir, on the parlor table, where she left 
theni. Fm not going to touch them,'^ said the girl, with em- 
phasis. “ She told me not, and Ihii not going against her.^’ 

“ To whom is the letter addressed?^^ 

“ Do you mean who it^s for, sir?’^ 

“Yes.^^ 

It’s for his lordship — and it’s to lie there till his lordship 
sends for it.” 

“ In that case ! may as well give it to his lordship’s servant, 
who can take it up to the house presently.” 

“ 1 don’t know if that will be right, sir. She said it was to 
be called for.” 

“ Then we call for it. I, his lordship’s cousin, and James, 
his lordship’s groom. AYon’t that do for you.^” 

“ I suppose that will be right, sir,” the girl answered, doubt- 
fully. “ The letter and the box are both on the table, and 1 
wasn’t to interfere with either of ’em, and I’m not going to 
do it. That’s all I can say.” 

The girl was swollen with the importance of her mission, as 
being associated with a mystery, and she was also in lively 
dread of her very severe mistress, who might come down the 
lane at any moment and surprise her in some act of dereliction. 

Theodore passed her by and went into the sitting-room, 
where he had taken tea with the Kempsters and Cuthbert 
Eamsay. 

A letter lay on the carved oak table in front of the window, 
and beside the letter there stood a walnut-wood box, eighteen 
inches by nine. The letter was addressed, in a bold, char- 
acteristic hand, to “ Lord Oheriton. To be called for.” The 
box had a small brass plate upon the lid, and a name engraved 
upon the plate — 

Thomas C. Dakcy, 

9 th Foot. 

No one who had ever seen such a box before could doubt that 
this was a pistol-case. It was unlocked, and Theodore lifted 
the lid. • 

0]ie pistol lay in its place, neatly fitted into the velvet-lined 
receptacle. The place for the second pistol was vacant. 

Theodore took the Colt’s revolver from his pocket and fitted 
it into the place beside the other pistol. It fitted exactly, and 
the two pistols were alike in all respects — alike as to size and 


346 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


fashion, alike as to the little silver plate upon the butt, and 
the initials, “ T. D.” 

Thomas Darcy! Darcy was the name of Evelyn Strang- 
way 's husband, and one of those pistols which had belonged at 
some period to Evelyn Strangway^s husband had been found 
in the well in the fruit garden, and the other in possession of 
Lord Oheriton^s protegee and pensioner, the humble dependent 
at his gates,^Mrs. Porter. 

Theodore changed his mind as to his plan of procedure. He 
did not send Mrs. Porter’s letter to Lord Olieriton by the 
groom, as he had intended after he himself had been driven to 
Wareham. His journey to London might be deferred now; 
indeed, in his present condition of mind, he was not the man 
to interview the authorities of Scotland Yard. He left Mrs. 
Porter’s letter in its place beside the pistol-case, and wrote a 
hasty line to his kinsman at Mrs. Porter’s writing-table, 
. where all the materials for correspondence were arranged ready 
to his hand. 

“ The West Lodge, 8:15. Pray come to me here at once, 
if you can. I have made a terrible discovery. There is a let- 
ter for you. Mrs. Porter has gone to London.” 

He put these lines into an envelope, sealed it, and then took 
it out to the groom, who was waiting stolidly, neatly tickling 
the cob’s ears, now and again, with an artistic circular move- 
ment of the lash, which brought into play all the power and 
ease of his wrist. 

“Drive back to the house with that note as fast as you 
can,” said Theodore, “ and let his lordship know that I am 
waiting for him here.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

“ Thy love and hate are both unwise ones, lady.” 

“Well, Theodore, what is your discovery?” asked Lord 
Cheriton, half an hour later, the two men standing face to 
face in Mrs. Porter’s sitting-room, amid the silence of the 
summer morning, a gigantic bee buzzing in the brown velvet 
heart of a tall sunflower, painfully, agonizingly audible to the 
younger man’s strained ears. 

“There is a letter, sir. You had better read that before I 
say anything,” answered Theodore. 

It was years since he had called his cousin “ sir,” not since he 
had been a school-boy and had been encouraged to open his 


THE DAY WILL GOME. 


347 


mind upon politics or cricket, over his single glass of Mouton 
or La Eose, after dinner. On those occasions a boyish respect 
for greatness had prompted the ceremonious address; to-day it 
came to his lips involuntarily — as if a barrier of ice were sud- 
denly interposed between himself and the man he had esteemed 
and admired for so many years of his life. 

Lord Oheriton held the letter in his hand unopened, while 
he stood looking at the pistol-case, where both pistols occupied 
their places — one bright and undamaged, the other rusted and 
spoiled, as to outward appearance at least. He was ghastly 
pale, but not much more so than he had looked yesterday after 
he left Mrs. Porter^s cottage. 

‘‘ That is my discovery,^'* said Theodore, pointing to the pis- 
tols. “ I stopped short in my journey to Scotland Yard, when 
I found that case upon the table here. I want to secure Juanita 
and her son from the possibilities of an insatiable hatred; but 
I donT want to bring trouble — or disgrace — upon you if I can 
help it. You have always been good to me. Lord Oheriton. 
You have regarded the claims of kindred. It would be base 
in me if I were to forget that you are of my own blood— that 
you have a right to my. devotion. Tell me, for Code’s sake, 
what I am to do. Trust me, if you can. I know so much 
already that it will be wisest and best for you to let* me know 
all — so that I may help you to find the murderer and to avoid 
any reopening of old wounds. 

“ I doubt if you or any one else can help me, Theodore,’^ 
said his cousin, wearily, looking straight before him through 
the open lattice and across the little fiower garden where the 
roses were still in their plenitude of color and perfume. “ I 
doubt if all my experience of life will enable me to help my- 
self even. There is a pass to which a man may come in his 
life — not wholly by his own fault — at which his case seems 
hopeless. He sees himself suddenly brought to a dead sto^, 
deep in the mire of an impassable road, and with the word 
‘ No Thoroughfare * staring him in the face. I have come to 
just that point. 

‘‘ Oh, but there is always an issue from every difficulty for 
a man of courage and resolution, said Theodore. I know 
you are not a man to be easily broken down by Fate. 1 am 
half in the light and half in the dark. It must have been the 
owner of that pistol who killed Godfrey Carmichael — but how 
came the case' and the fellow-pistol into Mrs. Porter's posses- 
sion? Was she that man’s accomplice? And Y^ho was he, 
and what was he, that she should be associated with him?" 

You believe that it was a man who fired that pistol?" 


348 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ Most assuredly. 1 believe it was the man whose wife 
lived for many years at Myrtle Cottage, Camberwell Grove; 
the man who called upon a house-agent at Camberwell to 
make inquiries about his wife, and who called himself by the 
name she bore in the neighborhood — the name of Danvers. 
Danvers may have been only an alias for Darcy, and in that 
case the man who called upon the agent was the husband of 
Evelyn Strangway, and the woman who lived for so many 
years in the seclusion of Myrtle Cottage was old Squire 
Strangway’s only daughter and Captain Darcy’s runaway 
wife. ’ ’ 

“ And you think Tom Darcy murdered my son-in-law?” 
asked Lord Cheriton, with a ghastly smile. 

“Ido.” 

“ And what do you suppose to have been the motive of that 
murder?” 

“ Revenge — revenge upon the man who tempted his wife 
away from him. ” 

“ The cur who ill-used and neglected his wife— -whose con- 
duct drove her from her wretched home and justified her aban- 
donment of him — was never man enough to conceive such a 
revenge, or to hate with such a hatred. However, in this case 
we need not enter upon the question of motive. There is one 
reason why Tom Darcy can not be suspected of any part in 
Sir Godfrey’s murder. He died ten years ago, and was buried 
at my expense in Norwood Cemetery.” 

“ Great God! then who Could have fired that pistol?” 

“ The answer to that question is most likely here,” replied 
Cheriton, quietly, as he tore open the envelope of Mrs. Porter’s 
letter. 

The letter was brief, but comprehensive and all-sufificing. 

“ You know now who killed your cherished daughter’s hus- 
band. If she is like me she will carry her sorrow to the grave. If 
she is like me all her days will be darkened by cruel memories. 
Y"our broken promise blighted my life. I have blighted her 
life — an eye for an eye. I told you, three-and-twenty years 
ago, that a day would come when you would be sorry for hav- 
ing abandoned me. I think that day has come. 

“ Evelyn Darcy.” 

Lord -Cheriton handed the letter to his kinsman without a 
word. 

“ Since you know so much of my history you may as well 
know all,” he said; “ so know the thorny pillow which a mail 


THE HAY WILL COME. 349 

makes for himself when he sacrifices the best years of his life 
to an illicit love. 

Theodore read those ghastly lines in silence. The signature 
told all. 

“ What in Heaven^s name brought Evelyn Strangway to be 
a lodge-keeper at the entrance of the house where she was 
born?^^ he asked, at last. “How could you permit such a 
life-long humiliation?^^ 

“ It was her own desire— it was at her insistence I allowed 
her to come here. I opposed her wish with all my power of 
argument, with all the strength of opposition. 1 offered to 
provide her with a home in town or country — at home or 
abroad — near at hand or at the Antipodes. I offered to settle 
four hundred a year upon her — to sink capital to that amount 
— to make her future and that of — our child — secure against 
the chances of fate. 

Your child — Mercy?” exclaimed Theodore. 

“ Yes, Mercy. My daughter and hers. You understand 
now why she refused my help. She would take nothing from 
her father. There was a like perversity in mother and daugh- 
ter, a determination to make me drink, the cup of remorse to 
the dregs. Oh, Theodore, it is a long and shameful story. 
To you — for the first time in my life — to you only among man- 
kind these lips have spoken of it. I have kept my secret. I 
have brooded upon it in the slow hours of many and many a 
wakeful night. I have never forgotten— 1 have not been 
allowed to forget. If time could have erased or softened that 
bitter memory under other circumstances I know not; but for 
me the cas^ was hopeless. My victim was there, at my gates, 
a perpetual memento of my folly and wrong-doing. ” 

“ Strange that a woman of refinement should elect to fill so 
degrading a position!” 

“ Perhaps only a refined and sensitive woman could have 
devised so refined a punishment. ‘ Let me live near you,^ she 
pleaded; ‘ let me live at the gate of the park I loved so well 
when I was a child — let me see you pass sometimes — open the 
gate for you, and just see you go by — without a word, without 
a look even, upon your part. It will be some consolation for 
me in my lonely, loveless life. I shall know that at least I 
am not forgotten.^ Forgotten; as if it had been possible for 
me to forget, under the happiest circumstances, even if she 
had made for herself a home at the furthest extremity of 
Europe or in the remotest of our colonies. As it was, her 
presence imbittered the place I loved— the great reward and 


350 


THE .DAY WILL COME. 


aim of my life. Her shadow fell across my young wife’s path- 
way; her influence darkened all my days.” 

He began to pace up and down the little room, with a fever- 
ish air. He seemed to fi^nd a sort of relief in talking of this 
burden which he had borne so long in secret-^borne with a 
smile upon his lips, suffering that silent agony which strong 
men have borne again and again in the history of mankind, 
carrying their silent punishment upon them till the grave re- 
vealed the hidden canker and laid bare the festering, wound 
which had rankled unsuspected by the world. 

“ She was cruelly treated by her husband, Theodore. A 
young, beautiful woman, married to a profligate and a sot. 
It had been a love-match, as the world calls it — that is to say, 
a marriage brought about by a school-girl’s impatience to 
break her bonds and a woman’s first delight in hearing herself 
called beautiful. She had flung herself away upon an idle, 
handsome reprobate; and three or four years after marriage 
she found herself alone and neglected in a shabby lodging in 
one of the squalidest streets off the Strand. I can see the 
wretched rooms she lived in, to-day, as I stand here — the piti- 
ful lodging-house furniture, the dingy curtains darkening the 
dark and dirty windows looking into the dark and dirty street. 
What a home for youth and beauty!” 

He paused, with an impatient sigh, took another turn across 
the narrow space, and then resumed: 

“ Our acquaintance began by accident — under an umbrella. 
1 met them together one night, husband and wife, leaving the 
little Strand Theater in the rain. I heard him tell her that it 
was not worth while, to take a cab, they were so near home; 
and something in her proud, handsome face and her con- 
temptuous way of replying to him caught my attention and 
interested me in her. I offered my umbrella, and we all three 
walked to Essex Street together. Just in that fortuitous way 
began the acquaintance that was to give its color to all my 
life. ■ The husband cultivated my friendship — was glad to meet 
me at my club — and dined with me as often as I cared to ask 
him. We used to go to Essex Street after dining together, 
and finish the evening with her, and so, by degrees, I came to 
know all about her — that she was the only daughter of the 
owner of Oheriton Chase, in my part of the county; that she 
was very handsome and very clever, though only half -educated; 
that she had offended her father by her marriage, and that she 
had not brought her husband a penny; that he neglected her, 
and that he drank; and that she was miserable. I came to 
know this very soon; I came very soon to love her. She was 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


351 


the first woman I had ever cared for, and I loved her passion- 
ately. . 

He took another turn, and sighed again, regretfully, despair- 
ingly, as one who looks back upon the pallid ghost of a love 
that has long been dead. 

“ It began with pity. I was so sorry for her, poor soul! her 
wasted life, her slighted beauty. God knows that for a long 
time I had no thought of sin. Gradually the yearning to see 
more of her, to bring some brightness and pleasure into her 
life, became too strong for prudence, and 1 persuaded her to 
meet me unknown to her husband. We planned little excur- 
sions, innocent enough in themselves, a morning drive and a 
modest luncheon at Richmond or Greenwich or Jack Strawy’s 
Castle, a trip fo Hampton Court or Windsor by boat or rail. 
She had hardly any acquaintance in London, and there was 
little fear of her being recognized. We went to a theater to- 
gether now and then, and sat in a dark stage box, happy, 
talking of an impossible future in the intervals of the perform- 
ance. We never said as much, but I think we had both a 
vague idea that Providence would help us — that her husband 
would die young, and leave us free to be happy together. 
Yes, we were very fond of each other, very single-hearte^^ in 
those days. She was only two-and-twenty, remember, and 1 
was still a young man.^^ 

Another pause, another sigh, and a look across the roses, as 
if across the long lapse of years to an unforgotten past. 

“ Heaven knows how long we might have gone on in this 
way, without sin, if not without treachery to the husband, who 
cared so little for his wife that it seemed scarcely dishonorable 
to deceive him. The climax was forced upon us by circum- 
stances. Darcy surprised a letter of mine, asking Evelyn to 
meet me at a theater. He attacked his wife brutally; refused 
to believe anything about our friendship, except the worst. 
He called her by names that were new and hideous to her ear, 
and her soul rose up in arms against him. She defied him, 
ran out of the house, took a cab, and came to my chambers in 
the foggy November evening. She came to me helpless, 
friendless, with no one in this wide world to love her or to pro- 
tect her, except me. This was the turning-point. Of course 
she could not stay there to be seen by my clerk and my 
laundress. 1 took her to Torquay that night, and we spent 
the winter moving from village to village along that romantic 
coast. My hope was that Darcy would apply for a divorce, 
and that in less than a year 1 might make the woman I loved, 
my wife. I rejoiced in the thought of his obscurity and hers. 


352 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


The record of the case would pass unnoticed in the papers, 
and years hence, when I should have made a position at the 
bar, nobody need know that the wife 1 loved and honored was 
once the runaway wife of another man. I had argued with- 
out allowing for the malignity of a cur; Darcy wrote his wife 
one of the most diabolical letters that ever was penned by 
*man; he wreaked his venom upon her — upon her, the weaker 
sinner; he called her by all the vile epithets in his copious 
vocabulary, and he told her that she should never have the 
right to the name of an honest woman, for that he would 
sooner hang himself than divorce her. And so she was to 
drag the chain for the rest of his life; and so she was to pay 
the bitter price of having thrown herself away upon a low-bred 
scoundrel."’^ 

“ Hard luck for both of you,"’"’ said Theodore. 

“Yes, it was indeed hard liick. If you could know how 
truly and entirely I loved her m those days — how completely 
happy we should have been in each other’s society, but for the 
imbittering consciousness of our false position. ' Cut off by his 
malevolence from escape by divorce, we naturally hoped for a 
day when we should be released by his death. His habits were , 
not those which conduce to long life. 

“We talked of the future — we had our plans and dreams 
about that life which was to be ours years hence, when 1 
should be making a large income, and when she would be 
really my wife. With that hope before her she was content to 
live in the strictest seclusion, to economize in every detail of 
our existence, to know no pleasure except that of my society. 
Never did a handsome woman resign herself to a duller or a 
more unselfish existence — and yet I believe for the first few 
years she was happy. We were both happy and we were full 
of hope. 

“ I remember the day she first suggested to me that I should 
buy Cheriton Chase when it came into the market. I was be- 
ginning to be employed in important cases and to get big fees 
marked upon my briefs, and 1 had taken silk. 1 had made 
my name, and I was saving money. Yet the suggestion that 
I should buy a large estate was too wild for any one but a 
woman to have made. From that hour, however, it was Eve- 
lyn’s idk fixe. She had a passionate love for her birthplace, 
an overweening pride in her race and name. Sho urged me 
to accumulate money — the estate would be sacrificed at half 
its value, perhaps would go for an old song. . She became 
rigidly economical, would hardly allow herself a new- gown, 
and her keenest delight was in the deposit notes I brought her. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


353 


as my money accumulated at the Union Bank. She had no 
idea of investments, or interest for my accumulations. Her 
notions about money were a child’s notions —the idea of saving 
a large sum to buy the desire of her heart; and the desire of 
her heart was Cheriton Chase. 

“ God knows I was honest and earnest enough in those days. 
I meant to buy that estate, for her sake, if it were possible*^ to 
be done. I meant to marry her directly she was free to be- 
come my wife. My fidelity had not wavered after a union of 
a dozen years and more — but Darcy was very far from dying. 
He had hunted out his wife in her quiet retreat, had threat- 
ened and annoyed her, and I had been obliged to buy him off 
by paying his passage to Canada — where he had been quartered 
with his regiment years before, and which he pretended would 
open a new field .for him. Our case, so far as he was con- 
cerned, seemed hopeless, and I was beginning to feel the dark- 
ness of the outlook when I made Maria Morales’s acquaintance. 

“ It was the old, old story, Theodore. God forbid you 
should ever go through that hackneyed experience. Just as 
the old chain was beginning to drag heavily, a new face ap- 
peared upon my path-way — a girlish face, bright with promise 
and hope. I saw the opportunity of a union which would 
smooth my way to a great position— crown the edifice of my 
fortune— give me a wif6 of whom I might be proud. Could I 
ever have been proud of the woman who had sacrificed her 
good name for my sake? 1 w^s bound to her by every con- 
sideration of honor and of duty. But there was the*fatal stain 
across both our lives. I could not take her into society with- 
out the fear of hearing malignant whispers as we passed. 
However well these social secrets may be kept, there is always 
some officious wretch to hunt them out, and the antecedents 
of James Dalbrook’s wife would have been public property. 

“ And here was a beautiful and innocent girl who loved me 
well enough to accept me as her husband, although 1 was 
twenty years her senior, loved me with that youthful upward- 
looking love which is of all sentiments the most dlitractive to a 
man who has lived a hard, workaday life in a hard, worka- 
day world. To spend an hour with Maria was to feel a Sab- 
bath peacefulness which solaced and refreshed my soul. I felt 
ten years younger when I was with her than I felt in my own 
— home. ” 

He stopped, with a heart-broken sigh. 

Oh, Theodore, beware of such burdens as that which I 
laid upon my shoulders; beware of such a chain as 1 wound 
about my st^s. What a dastard a man feels himself when 


354 


THE . DAY WILL COME. 


his love begins to cool for the woman who cast her life upon 
one chance — who leans upon him as the beginning and end o^, 
her existence. 1 have walked up and down the quiet path-way 
before Myrtle Cottage for an hour at a stretch, dreading to go 
in, lest she should read my treason in my face. The break 
came at last — suddenly. I paltered with my fate for a long 
time. I carried on a kind of Platonic flirtation with Maria 
Morales, taking monstrous pains to let her know that I never 
meant to go beyond Platonics— reminding her of the difference 
of our ages, and of my almost paternal regard — the vain subter- 
fuge of a self-deluded man. One moment of impulse swept 
away all barriers, and I left Onslow Square Marian’s engaged 
husband. Her father’s generosity precipitated matters. Squire 
Strangway had been dead nearly a year, and the estate was in 
the hands of the mortgagee, who had been trying to sell it for 
some time. My future father-in-law was eager for the pur- 
chase directly I suggested it to him, and my wife’s dowry 
afforded me the means of realizing Evelyn’s long- cherished 
dream.” ' , 

“ Cruel for her, poor creature!” 

“ Cruel — brutal — diabolical! I felt the blackness of my 
treason, and yet it had been brought about by circumstances 
rather than by any deliberate act of mine. 1 had to go to the 
woman who still loved me and still trusted me, and tell her 
what I was going to do. I had to do this, and I did it — by 
word of mouth — face to face.— not resorting to the coward’s 
expedient of a letter. God help me! the memory of that 
scene is with me now. It was too terrible for words; but after 
the storm came a calm, and a week later 1 went across to Bou- 
logne with her, and saw her comfortably established there at a 
private hotel, where she was to remain as long as she liked, 
while she made up her mind as to her future residence. The 
furniture was sent to the Pantechnicon. The 7^omewas broken 
up 'forever.” 

“ Ai^d the daughter, where was she?” 

Lord Cheriton answered, with a smile of infinite bitterness: 

“ The daughter had troubled us very little. Evelyn was 
not an exacting mother. The child’s existence was a burden 
to her— rendered hateful by the stigma upon her birth, which 
the mother could not forget. Mercy’s infancy was spent in a 
Buckinghamshire village, in the cottage of her foster-mother. 
Mother and daughter never lived under the same roof till they 
came here together, when Mercy was seven years old.” 

“ Yes, according to village tradition, Mrs. Porter was pas- 


THE DAY WILL COME. , 355 

sionately fond of her daughter, and broken-hearted at her 
loss/\ 

“ Village tradition often lies. I do not believe that Evelyn 
ever loved her child. She bitterly felt the circumstances of 
her birth— she bitterly resented her unhappy fate; but I be- 
lieve it was her pride, her deep sense of wrong done to herself, 
which tortured her rather than her love for her only child. 
She is a strange woman, Theodore — a woman who could- do 
that deed — a woman who could write that letter. Your friend 
has fathomed her unhappy secret. She was a mad woman 
when she fired that shot. She was mad when she penned tliid 
letter. And now, Theodore, T have trusted you as I never bt- 
fore trusted mortal man. I have ripped open an old wound. 
You know all, and you see what lies before me. I have to 
find that woman and to save her from the consequences of her 
crime, and to save my daughter and my grandson from the 
hazards of a mad woman^s malignity. You can help me, 
Theodore, if you can keep a cooX clear brain, -and do just 
what I ask you to do, and no more. 

He put aside his emotion with one stupendous effort, and 
became a man of iron, cool, resolute, unflinching. 

“ I will obey you implicitly, said Theodore. 

He had been completely won by his kinsman's candor. Had 
James Dalbrook told him anytliing less* than the truth he 
would have despised him. As it was, he felt that he could 
still respect him, in spite of that fatal error, whibli had brought 
such deadly retribution. 

“ It is early yet,^^ said Lord Cheriton, looking at his watch, 
and from that to the neat little clock on the mantel-piece, to 
where the hands pointed to. twenty minutes past nine. The 
dog-cart is waiting outside. Ho you drive to the Priory and 
put yourself on guard there till — till that unhappy woman has 
been traced. You can tell Juanita that I have sent you there 
— that I have heard of dangerous characters being about, and 
that I am afraid of her being in the house with only servants: 
My wife shall follow you la£er, and can stay at the Priory while 
1 am away from home, which I must be, perhaps, for some 
time. I have to find her, Theodore. 

“ Have you any idea where she may be gone?^^ 

“ For the moment, none. She may have made her way to 
he nearest river and thrown herself in. Living or dead, I 
have to find her. That is my business. And when I have 
found her I have to get her put away out of the reach of the 
law. That is my business. 

“God help you to carry it through, said Theodore. “ I 


856 


JTHE DAY WILL COME. 

shall stay at the Priory till I hear from yon. Be so kind as 
to ask Lady Oheritoii to bring my portmanteau and dressing- 
bag in her carriage this afternoon. I may tell Juanita that 
her mother is coming to-day, may 1 not.^'’^ 

“ Decidedly. GocS-bye. God bless you, Theodore. 1 know 
that I may rely upon your holding your tongue. I know I 
can rely upon your active help if I should need you.^^ 

And so with a cordial grasp of hands they parted, Theo- 
dore to take his seat in the dog-cart, and drive toward the 
Priory to offer himself to his cousin as her guest for an in- 
definite period. It was a curious position in which he found 
himself; but the delight of being in Juanita^s society, of be- 
coming himself in some wise her protector, was a counterbal- 
ance to the embarrassing conditions under which he was to 
approach her. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

“ Love reasons without reason.” 

The cob was all the fresher for the impatience which he had 
suffered in standing for nearly an hour in the lane, and he 
bowled the dog-cart along the level roads at a tremendous pace. 
Theodore arrived at the Priory before eleven, and found 
Juanita sitting on the lawn with her baby in her lap and Sul- 
tan at her side: His heart leaped with gladness at the sight 
of her sitting there, safe and happy, in the morning sunshine, 
for his morbid imagination had been at work as he drove 
along, and he had been haunted by hideous visions of some 
swift and bloody act which might be done by the fugitive mad 
woman before lie could reach the Priory. What deed might 
not be done by a woman in the state of mind which that woman 
must have been in when she left the evidence of her crime and 
the admission of her crime upon the table and fled out of her 
hou^e in the early morning? A silent thanksgiving went uj) 
from his heart to his God as he saw Juanita sitting in the sun- 
shine, smiling at him, holding out her hand to him in sur- 
prised welcome. She was safe, and it was his business to guard 
her against that deadly enemy. He knew now whence the 
danger was to come — whose the hand he had to fear. It was 
no longer a nameless enemy, an inscrutable peril, from which 
he had to defend her. 

“ How early you are, Theodore. Everybody is well, I hope 
' — there is nothing wrong at home?^’ 

“ No, every one is well. Your father is going to London 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


357 

for a days, and. your mother is coming to stay with you 
during his absence, and I come to throw myself on your hos- 
pitality while she is here. His lordship has heard of &ome sus- 
picious characters in your neighborhood, and he has taken it 
into his head that it will be well for you to have me as your 
guest until your brothers-in-law come to you for the shooting. 
I hope you won't mind having me, Juanita?" 

Mind, no, I am delighted to have you, and my mother, 
too. 1 was beginning to feel rather lonely, and had half decid- 
on carrying baby oft to Swanage. Isn’t he a fortunate boy 
to have two doting grandmothers?" She checked herself, 
with a sudden sigh, remembering in what respect the richly 
dowered infant was so much poorer than other babies. “ Yes, 
darling," she murmured, bending over the sleeping -face, rosy 
amid its lace and ribbons as it nestled against her arm. “ Yes, 
there is plenty of love for you upon earth, my fatherless one, 
and, who knows, perhaps Ms love watching over you in 
heaven. " 

After this maternal interlude she remembered the obliga- 
tions of hospitality. 

“ Have you breakfasted, Theo. You must have left Cheri- 
ton so very early." 

Theodore did not tell her how earl}^, but he confessed to 
having only taken a cup of tea. 

“ Then I will order some breakfast out here for you. It is 
such a pei-fect morning. Baby and I will stay with you while 
you take your breakfast. " 

She called the nurse, who was close by, and gave her orders, 
and presently the gypsy table was brought out, and a cozy 
breakfast was arranged upon the shining damask, and Theo- 
dore was having his coffee poured out for him, by the loveliest 
hands he had ever seen, while the nurse paraded up and down 
the lawn with the newly awakened baby. 

“ I can not understand my father taking an alarm of that 
kind," Juanita said, presently, after a thoughtful silence. 
“ It is so unlike him. As jf any harm could come to me from 
tramps or gypsies, or even professional burglars, with half a 
dozen men-servants in the house, and all my valuable jewels 
safe at the bank. Theo, does it mean anything?"^ she asked, 
suddenly. “ Does it mean that my father has found out some- 
thing about the murder?" 

He was silent, painfully embarrassed by this home-question. 
To answer it would be to break faith with Lord Cheriton; to 
refuse to answer was in some manner to break his promise to 
Juanita. 


358 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ 1 must ask you to let me leave that question unanswered 
for a few days, Juanita,^’ he said. “ Whatever discovery has 
been made" it is your father^s discovery and not mine. His 
lips alone can tell it to you. 

“ You know who murdered my husband?” 

‘‘ No, Juanita, I know nothing. The light we are following 
may be a false one. ” 

He remembered how many lying confessions of crime had 
been made by lunacy since the history of crime began — how 
poor distraught creatures who would not have killed a worm 
had taken upon themselves the burdeh of notorious assassina- 
tions, and had put the police to the trouble of proving them 
self -accusing perjurers. Might not Mrs. Porter be such a one 
as these? 

“Ah! but you are following some new light — you are on 
the track of his murderer?” 

“ I think we are. But you must be patient, Juanita. You . 
must wait till your father may choose to speak. - The business 
is out of my hands now, and has passed into his.” 

“ And he is going to London to-day, you say — he is going 
upon that business?” 

“I have said too much already, Juanita. I entreat you to 
ask me no more.” 

She gave an impatient sigh, and turned from her cousin to 
the dog, as if he were the more interesting companion of the 
two. 

“Well, I suppose I must be content to wait,” she said; 
“ but if you knew what 1 have suffered — what I shall suffer 
till that mystery is solved — you would not wonder if 1 feel 
angry at being kept in the ‘dark. Has your friend gone back 
to. London?” 

“ Yes, but he is coming back again before my holiday is 
over. You like him, I know, Juanita?” heladded, looking at 
her, somewhat earnestly. 

“ Yes, I like him,” she answered, carelessly, but with the 
suspicion of a blush. ‘‘ I suppose, most people like him, do 
they not? He is so bright and clever.” 

“ I am very glad you like him. He is the most valued 
friend I have — indeed, I might almost say he is the only friend 
I made for myself at the university. I made plenty of ac- 
quaintances, but very few I cared to meet in after-life. Itarn- 
say was like a brother. It would have been a real grief to me 
if our friendship had not lasted.” 

“ He is ambitious, is he not?” 

“ Very ambitious.” 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


359 


‘‘ And proud?^^ 

“ Very proud; but it is noble pride — the pride that keeps 
a man straight in all his doings — the pride that prefers bread 
and cheese in a garret to turtle and venison at a par venues 
table. He is a splendid fellow, Nita, and I am proud of his 
friendship.'’^ 

“ Is he very busy, that he should be so determined to leave 
Dorchester?^’ 

“ Yes, he is full of work always. • I thought he might have 
been content to take a few weeks’ quiet reading in our sleepy 
old town, but he wanted to get back to the hospital. He will 
come back for a day or two when the whim seizes him. He 
has always been erratic in his pleasures, but steady as a rock 
in his work. ” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

“ The heaviness and guilt within my bosom 
Take off thy manhood.” 

Lord Cherito!^ put the pistol- case under his arm, and left 
the cottage. The case was covered by his loose summer over- 
coat, and anybody meeting him in the park might have sup- 
posed that he was carrying a book, or might haye failed to 
observe that he was carrying anything whatever. As it hap- 
pened, he met nobody between the west gate and the house. 
He went in at the open window of the library, locked the 
pistol-case in one of the capacious drawers of the large writing- 
table — drawers which contained many of his most important 
documents, and which were provided with Chubb’s most in- 
violable locks. 

When this was done he went to his wife’s morning-room, 
where she was generally to be found at this hour, her li^ht 
breakfast finished, and her newspaper reading or letter writing 
begun. 

“ Where have you been so early, James?” she asked, look- 
ing up at him with an affectionate smile. “ I was surprised 
to hear you had gone out before breakfast.” 

He looked at her in silence for a few moments — lost in 
thought. The beautiful and gracious face turned toward him 
in gentle inquiry had never frowned upon him jn all their 
years of wedded life. Never had that tranquil affection failed 
Him. There had been no dramatic passion in their love, no 
fierce alterations of despair and bliss— no doubts, no jealousies. 
His girlish wife had given herself to him in implicit trustful- 
ness, fond of him and proud of him, believing in him with a 


3G0 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


faith second only to her faith in God. For three-and- twenty 
years of- cloudless wedded life she had made his days happy. ^ 
Never in all those years had she given him reason for one 
hour of doubt or trouble. She had been his loviiig and loyal 
helpmate, sharing his hopes and his ambitious, caring for the 
people he cared for, respecting even his prejudices, shaping 
her life in all things to please him. 

Great Heaven! what a contrast with that other woman 
whose fiery and exacting love had made his life subordinate to 
hers — whose jealousy had claimed the total surrender of all 
other ties, of all other pleasures, had cut him off from all the 
advantages of society, and deprived him of the power to make 
friends among his fellow-men, had kept him as her bond 
slave, accepting nothing less than a complete isolation from 
all that men hold best in life. 

He looked at his wife’s calm beauty — where scarce a line 
upon the ivory-white forehead marked the progress of years — 
the soft, gazelle-liko eyes lifted so meekly to meet his own — ^ 
and compared this placid face with that other tace, handsome 
too after its fashion, long after the bloom of youth had gone, 
but marked in every feature with the traces of a nervous, 
overstrung temperament, a fiery, irritable temper, the face of 
a woman ii\ whose character there were none of the elements 
of domestic happiness — ^^or, in a word, the face of a Strangway, 
the daughter of a perverse and unhappy race, from whose line 
no life of happiness and well-doing had arisen within the 
memory of man. 

“ My dear Maria, 1 was wrong in not leaving a message. I 
was sent for to Mrs. Porter’s cottage. She has gone away in 
rather a mysterious manner. ” 

“ Gone away?” 

“ Yes, that in itself is rather astonishing, you know; but 
there was something so strange and abrupt in her manner of 
leaving that I feel it my duty to look after her. I shall go up 
to town by the midday train. I have other business which 
may keep me in London for a few days, till the shooting Be- 
gins, perhaps. I have sent Theodore to the Priory to tell 
Juanita that you are going to her this afternoon, and that you 
will stay with her till 1 come back.” 

^ “ That is disposing of me rather as if I were a chattel,” said 
his wife, smiling. 

‘‘ I knew you would be glad of a few days’ quiet baby- 
worship at the Priory, and I knew this house would be dull 
for you without any visitors.” 

“ Yes, there is always a gloom upon the house when you are 


IHE BAY WILL COME. 


3G1 


away — a much deeper gloom since last summer. No sooner 
am I alone than I begin to think of that dreadful night when 
my poor girl saw her murdered husband lying at her feet. 
Yes, James, you are right in sending me away. I shall be 
happy at the Priory with my darling — and she can never 
again be happy with me in this house. 

Lord Cheriton breakfasted in his wife^s room— it was only 
an apology for breakfast, for he was too agitated to eat; but 
he refreshed himself with a cup of strong tea, and he enjoyed 
the restfulness of his wife^s companionship while he sat there 
waiting for the announcement of the carriage which was to 
take him to Wareham. 

“ What makes you so uneasy about Mrs. Porter Lady 
Cheriton asked, presently. 

“ The suddenness and strangeness of her departure, in the 
first place. It would have been only natural she should have 
communicated with you or me before she left. And, in the 
second place, I have been made uneasy by an observation of 
Mr. Ramsay’s. He has conceived the opinion that Mrs. Porter 
is not altogether right in her mind — that there is a strain of 
madness. 

“ Oh, James, that would be dreadful 

“ Yes, it would be dreadful to think of her wandering about 
alone — the very fact that she has hardly left that cottage for 
the last twenty years, except to go to church, would make her 
nervous and helpless among strangers and in a strange town. 
She would hardly be able to take car« of herself, perhaps^ — and 
if, in addition to this, her mind is not quite right — ” 

“ Oh, poor thing! It is terrible to think of it. And you 
do not even know where she is gone?” 

“ She told the servant she was going to London. God 
knqws whether that is true or false. She took no luggage, 
not'even a hand-bag. 

She may have gone to her daughter. 

“ To Mercy? Yes, that is an idea. It never occurred to 
me. She has been so cold and hard about her daughter in all 
these years— and yet it might be so. She might have relented 
at last. 

A servant announced the carriage. His lordship’s port- 
manteau had been got in, and all was ready. 

“ Good-bye, Maria. I have no time to lose, as I have in- 
quiries to make and telegrams to dispatch at the station. ” 

“ You will stay in Victoria Street, of course?” 

“ Yes. I shall telegraph to Mrs. Begby. I am taking Wil- 
Bon; I shall be very well taken care of, be sure, dearest.” 


362 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


He kissed her and hurried away. He sighed as he left that^ 
atmosphere of perfect peace — sighed again as he thought of the 
business that lay before him. He had to find her — this mur- 
deress; he had to prove that she was mad — if it were possible; 
and to put her away forever in sorqe safe retreat, secure from 
the hazard of discovery — a hard and bitter task for the man 
who had once loved her, and whose love had been her destruc- 
tion. 

■ He made his inquiries of the station-master. Yes. Mrs. 
Porter had left by the early train.. She had taken a second- 
class ticket for Waterloo. 

Lord Cheriton telegraphed to Miss Marian Gray, at 69 
Hercules Buildings, Lambeth: 

“ If your mother is with you when you receive this I beg 
you to detain her till I come. Ohekitoh.^^ 

His wife’s suggestion seemed to him like inspiration. Where 
else could that desolate woman seek for a shelter but under 
the roof which sheltered her only child? She was utterly 
friendless in London and elsewhere — unless, indeed, her old 
governess, Sarah Newton, could be counted as a friend. 

The Weymouth up-train strolled in, and he took his seat in 
the corner of a first-class compartment, where he was tolerably 
secure of being left to himself for the whole of the journey, 
guards and porters conspiring to protect his seclusion, albeit 
he had not taken the trouble to engage a compartment. His 
„ greatness was known all along the line. 

He had ample leisure for thought during that three-hours’ 
journey, leisure to live over a^ain that life of long ago which 
had been brought so vividly back to his memory by the events 
of to-day. He had made it his business to forget that past 
life,' so far as forgetfulness was possible with that living re- 
minder forever at his gate. Habit had even reconciled him to 
the presence of Mrs. Porter at the west lodge. Her supreme 
quietude had argued her contentment. Never by so much as 
one imprudent word, or one suspicious look> had she aroused 
his wife’ doubts as to her past relations with her employer. 
She had been accepted by all the little world of Cheriton; she 
had behaved in the most exemplary manner; and although he 
had uev^r driven in at the west gate, and seen her standing 
there in her attitude of stern humility, without a pang of re- 
morse and a stinging sense of shame, yet that sharp moment 
of pain being past, he was able to suWit to her existence as 
the one last forfeit he had to pay for his sin. And now he 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


3(>3 

knew that the statue-like calm of her face, as she had looked 
up at him in the clear light, under the branching beeches, had 
been only the mask of hidden fires — that, through all those 
years in which she had seemed the image of quiet resignation, 
of submission to a mournful fate, she had been garnering up 
her vengeance to wreak it upon the offender in his most un- 
guarded hour, piercing the breast of the father through the 
innocent heart of the child. He knew now that hatred had 
been forever at his doors; that angry pride had watched his 
going in and coming out under the guise of humility; that by 
day and by night hideous thoughts had been busy in that 
hyper-active brain, such thoughts as point the way to madness 
and to crime. 

When he had made up his mind to break his promise to 
Evelyn Darcy, and to marry another woman, fifteen years her 
j unior, he had told himself that the wrench once made, the 
link once sundered, all would be over. She would submit, as 
other women have submitted, to the common end of such ties. 
She could not deem herself more unfoi’tunate than those other 
women had been, since his attachment had endured far longer 
than the common span of illicit loves. He had been patient, 
and faithful, and unselfish in his devotion for more than a 
decade. He would have gone on waiting, perhaps, had there 
been a ray of hope; but Tom Darcy had shown a malignant 
persistency in keeping alive, a,nd even were Tom Darcy dead 
how bitter a thing it would be for the fashionable Queen’s 
Counsel to enter society with a wife of damaged character. In 
the old days of hopefulness and fond love they had told each 
other that the stain upon the past need never be known in 
that brilliant future to which they both looked forward; but 
now he told himself that, despite their secluded life, the facts 
of that past would ooze out. People would insist upon finding 
out who Mr. Dalbrook’s wife was. It would not be enough to 
say, “ She is there — handsome, clever, and a lady.” Society 
would peer and pry into the background of her life. Whose 
daughter was she? Had she been married before? And in 
that case who was her husband? Where had she lived before 
her recent marriage? Had she been in the Colonies or on the 
Continent all this time that society had seen nothing of her? 

Those inevitable questions would have made his life a burden 
and lier life an agony, James Dalbrook told himself, even had 
Darcy been so complaisant as to die and leave them free to re- 
habilitate their position by marriage; but Darcy had shown no 
disposition toward dying, and now here was a lovely girl with 
a fortune willing to marry him— ^a girl to whom his heart had 


364 


THE DAY WILL COME, 


gone out, despite his conscientious endeavor to be faithful to 
that old attachment. ^ ^ 

To-day, in his agony of remorse and apprehension, he could 
recall the scene of their severance as well as if it had happened 
yesterday. 

He had gone home in the chill March twilight, in that de- 
pressing season when the pale spring flowers, daffodils, prim- 
roses, and narcissus are fighting their ineflectual battle with 
the cutting east wind; when the sparrows have eaten the 
hearts of all the crocuses, and the scanty grass in suburban 
gardens is white with dust; when the too-eariy-lighted lamps 
have a sickly look in the windy streets, and the neglected fires 
in suburban drawing-rooms are more dismal than fireless 
hearths. 

Camberwell G-rove was not at its best in this bleak March 
season. The time had been when the long, narrow garden at . 
Myrtle Cottage was carefully kept, and when Evelyn had taken 
a pride in the old-fashioned flower-borders and the blossoming 
creepers upon the veranSa, but for the last two or three years 
she had been careless and indifferent, and one jobbing-gardener 
having left die neighborhood, she had taken no pains to get 
another in his place; nor had she done any of that weeding 
and watering and pruning which had at one time’ helped to 
shorten the long, light evenings. A weariness of all things 
had come upon her, tired out with long waiting for brighter 
days. 

He had refused* Don Joe^s pressing invitation to dine in 
Onslow Square. He had turned his back upon the warm 
brightness of newly furnished drawing-rooms, an atmosphere 
of hot-house flowers, great rush baskets of tulips, hyacinths, 
and narcissus, low vases of lilies of the valley, and Parma vio- 
lets; and amid all this brightness and color the beautiful 
Spanish girl, with her pale^, clear complexion and lustrous 
black eyes. He had left his newly betrothed wife, reluctant 
to let him go, in order to face the most painful crisis that can 
occur in any man’s life; in order to tell the woman who had 
loved and trusted him that love was at an end between them; 
that the bond was broken, and his promise of no account. 

1 expected you earlier, James,” she said, opening the door 
to him. 

It was rarely that the door. was opened by a servant when he 
went home. She was always waiting for his knock. 

“ Yes, it is late, I know. I have been detained. I have 
lingered a little on the way — I walked from the West End.” 


THE, DAY WILL COME. 


3()5 

“ What, all the way? By the Walworth Koad, that low 
neighborhood you dislike so much?’^ 

‘‘ r did not care where I walked, Evelyn. I was too miser- 
able to think about my surroundings.^^ * 

“ Miserable/^ she asked, looking at him searchingly, and 
growing pale as she looked, as if the pallor of his face reflected 
itself in hers. “ What should make you miserable?^’ 

They were standing in the drawing-room, where the 
niodeYator-lamp upon the table shone, bright and clear, upon 
his troubled face. 

“ You have lost your money, James~you have speculated — 
you wonT be able to buy Cheriton Chase^^^ she said, breath- 
lessly. 

Nonsense, Evelyn. DonT you know that you have the 
deposit notes for -every pound I ever saved locked up in your 
desk. ^ ^ 

“ Ah, but you might speculate — you may have ruined your- 
self — all the same.-’^ 

“ I have not ruined myself that way, Evelyn. Oh! for 
God's sake forgive me, pity me, if you can. I have engaged 
myself to a girl who loves me, though I am twenty years her 
senior; a girl who is proud of me and believes in me. This 
engagement means a new and happy life for me, and may 
mean release for you— who knows? We have neither of us 
been happy lately. I think we have both felt that the end 
must come." 

She laid her hand upon his breast, holding the lapel of his 
coat tightly with her thin white fingers, as i| she would pin 
him there forever, looking straight into his eyes, with her own 
eyes dilated and flaming, 

“ You are a coward and a traitor!" she said, between her 
clinched teeth. “ You are lying, and you know you are lying. 
The tie has grown weaker for you, perhaps; not for me. ’ Eor 
*me every year has strengthened it; for me every hope 1 have 
has pointed to one future — the future in which 1 am to be 
your wife. You know what my husband's habits are; you know 
what his life is worth as compared with yours. You know that 
we must be near the end of our probation, that suddenly^ 
without an hour's warning, we may hear of his death, and you 
will be free to give me the name and place I have earned by 
ten years' fidelity and patience and self-denial. You know this, 
and that my life is bound up in yours; that I cah not exist 
without you except as the most miserable of women; that I 
have not a friend in the word, not a hope in the world, not an 
ambition in the world but you; and you look me in the face 


366 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


with those dull, cold eyes, and tell me you have engaged your- 
self to a girl twenty years your junior; that you are going ^o 
ca^t me off — me, your wife of ten years — more than wife in 
de^tion, "more than wife in self-sacrifice. 

^ ‘ God knows the sacrifice was mutual, Evelyn. If there has 
been surrender on your side there has been surrender on mine. 
1 have turned my back upon society just at the time when it 
would have been most enjoyable and most valuable. But I 
won^t even try to excuse myself.’ I have acted very badly; I 
deserve the worst you can say of me. I thought I was sure of 
myself, 1 thought I was rock; but the hour of temptation 
came, and I was nfft strong enough to withstand it. Be gener- 
ous, Evelyn. Clasp hands and forgive me. Wherever I am 
and whatever I do, your welfare shall be my first, most sacred 
care. The money I hava saved shall be invested for your 
benefit — shall be secured to your use and our daughter’s after 
you.” 

“ Money! benefit!” she cried, wildly. “ How dare you talk 
to me of money? How dare you put my wrongs in the balance 
against your filthy, sordid rrioney? Do you think money can 
help me to forget you, or to hate myself less dhan I do for 
having loved and trusted you?” 

And then followed a paroxysm of passionate despair at the 
memory of which, after all the intervening years of peace and 
prosperity, wedded love’ and deadened conscience, his blood 
ran cold. He found himself face to face with a woman’s 
frenzy, impotent to comfort or to tranquilize her. There was 
a moment when he had to exert brute force to prevent her 
dashing her brMns out against the wall. 

All through that long, hideous night he watched by her, and 
pleaded with her, and guarded her from her own violence. At 
one time he was on his knees before her, offering to give up 
the desire of his heart, to break his’*^olemn engagement of a 
few hours old, and to remain true to her till the end of time; 
but she spurned his offered sacrifice. 

“ What! now that I know you love another woman? What! 
keep you by my side, while I know your heart is elsewhere? 
What! have you mine by the strength of a chain, like a galley- 
slave linked to his jail-companion, knowing that you hate me? 
Not for worlds— not to be a duchess! No, no, no! The 
wrong is done; the wrong was in withdrawing your love. 
There is no such thing as faithfulness from you to me. All is 
over. ” 

He argued against himself; implored her to accept his 
Eacrifice. 


THE DAt WILL COME. 


367 


“ I would do anything in this world, pay any price, rather 
than see such unhappiness as I have seen to-night,’^ he said, 
standing in the cold, gray dawn, haggard and aged by the long 
night of agony, beside the bed where that convulsed form lay 
writhing, with tear-disfigured face, lips wounded and blood- 
stained, strained eye-balls, and disheveled hair. 

She was adamant against his pleading. 

“You can not give me back my trust in you. I am not 
the coarse, common creature you think me. I do not want to 
keep your dull clay, when your soul has gone to another. I 
will show you that 1 can live without you. 

This was the beginning of a calmer mood, which he was fain 
to welcome, though he knew in his heart that it was the icy 
calmness of despair. Before the world was astir in Camberwell 
Grove she had grown curiously quiet and rational. She had 
bathed her distorted features, and bound up her hair. She 
was clothed and in her right mind again; and sat quietly 
listening while he told her the 'story of his temptation, and 
how this new love had crept into his heart unawares, and how 
an innocent girFs naive preference had flattered him into in- 
fidelity to the love of ten years. She listened quietly while he 
spoke of the future, trying to make a sunny picture of the 
new home, in England or abroad, which she was to make for 
herself. 

“ You have been far too self-denying,^^ he said; “ you have 
sacrificed even your own comfort to help me to grow r^h. 
You must at least share my prosperity. Money need be no 
object in your future existence. Choose your new home where 
you will, and let it be as bright and enjoyable as ample means 
can make it.^^ 

“ 1 will take nothing from you but the bare necessities of 
existence, she said; “ 1 will go to the obscurest spot that I 
can find, and rot there alone, or with my daughter, as you 
think fit. I may ask one favor of you. Get me out of this 
house as soon as you can. I was once happy here,’^ she 
added, hoarsely, looking round the room with an expression 
that tortured him. 

“ I will take you across the Channel to-day, if you like. 
Change of air and scene may do you good. You have lived 
too long in this place. 

“ Ten years ton long,’’ she answered, with a faint laugh. 

He went across to Boulogne with her by the night mail, 
established her in a private hotel in the Grande Rue, and left 
her there within an hour of their landing, with a pocket-book 
containing a hundred pounds in her lap. Nothing could ex- 


3G8 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


ceed his tenderness in this parting; nor could any man^s com- 
passion for a woman he had ceased to love be deeper than his. ^ 
He was full of thoughtfulness for her future. He implored 
her to think of him as her devoted friend, to whom her welfare 
was of the uttermost importance, to call upon him unhesi- 
tatingly for any help in any scheme of life which she might 
make for herself. 

‘‘ I shall warehouse your furniture at the Pantechnicon, so 
that wherever you fix your future abode it may }De conveyed 
there, he said. “ We took some pains in choosing those 
things, and you may prefer them to newer and even better 
furniture. Write to me when you have made your choice of a 
new home. 

“ Homel^^ she echoed, and that was all. 

When you have found that home and settled down there, 
you will have Mercy to share your life, will you uot?^^ he 
pleaded. “ The child will be a comfort to you.'’^ 

“ A comfort, yes. She w£ts born under such happy condi- 
tions — she has such reason to be proud of her parentage! 
Mercy — Mercy what? She must have some kind of surname, 

I suppose, before she is much older. What is she to be 
called?^^ 

“ You are very cruel, Evelyn. What does a name matter?^^ 

“ Everything. A name means a history. Should 1 be here, 
and you bidding me good-bye, if my name were Halbrook? It 
is just because my name is not Halbrook that you can cast m(3 
adrfft,. like a rotten boat which a man sends down the stream 
to be stranded on a mud-bank, and molder there piecemeal, 
inch by inch. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

“ One little flash of summer light, 

One brief and passionate dream.” 

Lord Cheritoh sent his valet and his portmanteau to 
Victoria Street in a cab, and walked to Hercules Buildings. 

It was a short distance from the terminus, and the movement 
was a relief to his troubled brain. He was strangely agitated 
in approaching the girl whom he had known only as Mercy 
Porter, who had lived to twenty-seven years of age, almost as 
a stranger to him, whom, he had looked upon in her girlhood 
with a keen and painful interest, but an interest which he had 
never betrayed by one outward sign. It was her motherk; 
perversity and wrongheadedness, he told himself, which had 
necessitated this complete estrangement. Had she chosen to 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


369 


bring up her daughter anywhere else he might have acted in 
some wise as a father to her. But she had chosen to plaid, the 
girl there, at his gates, in the sight of his wife and her cbi’d; 
and he was thus constrained to ignore the tie, to repress every 
token of interest, every sign of emotion, to act his solemn 
lifelong lie, and play his pit of benefactor and patron to the 
end. 

And now he had reason to believe that Mercy had discovered 
the secret of her birth. Her contemptuous refusal of his 
bounty could proceed, he thought, from no other cause. She 
knew that he was her father, and she would accept no boon 
from a father who had denied her his name and his love. 

She resented her mother^s wrongs, as well as her. own. His 
heart sunk at the thought of standing before her — his daughter 
and his judge! 

The house in Hercules Buildings was decent and clean- 
looking. The woman who opened the door told him that Miss 
Gray was at home, and directed him to the second floor back. 

“ Is she alone?^’ he asked. “ Has there been no one with 
her this moruing?^^ 

‘‘ No, sir. She doiiT have anybody come to see her once in 
six months, except Miss Newton. 

Lady Cheriton'’s conjecture was not the inspiration he had 
thought. Mrs. Porter had not made her way here. What if 
she had doubled back after sliarting in the train for London — 
got out at the first station and gone to the Priory — to realize 
that ghastly apprehension of Theodore Dalbrook’s, and to fol- 
low up her scheme of vengeance by some new crime. Once 
admit that she was mad and there was no limit to the evil she 
might attempt and do. His only comfort was in the idea that 
Juanita's cousin was there, on the alert to guard her from 
every possible attack. 

He knocked at the door of the back room on the second- 
floor landing, and it was opened by the faded woman he had 
seen last in her fresh young beauty, a fair bright face at a 
rustic casement, framed in verdure. The face was sadly aged 
since he had looked upon it, and if it was beautiful still it was 
with the beauty of thought and expression, rather than of 
form or coloring. 

The grave sad eyes were lifted to his face as Mercy made 
way for him to enter. She placed a chair for him, and stood 
a little way off, waiting for him to speak. He looked at the 
small room with infinite sadness. Her neatness and ingenuity 
had made the best of the smallest means, and the shabby little 
room had as fresh and gay an air as if it had been a room in 


370 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


an Alpine chalet, or a farm-house in Normandy. The poor 
little pallet-bed was hidden by white dimity curtains, the wash- 
stand was screened by a drapery of the. same white dimity, 
daintily arranged with bright ribbon bows. There was a shelf 
of neatly bound books above the mantle-piece, and there were 
bits of Japanese china here and thlie, giving a touch of brill- 
iant color to the cheap white paper on the walls and the white 
draperies. The room had been furnished by Mercy herself. 
The chairs and tables were of cheap but substantial wicker- 
work. There was a pine chest of drawers, with a Japanese 
looking-glass hanging above it, and. there was a quaint little 
japanned table of bright vermilion at the side of Mercy’s arm- 
chair. That poor little second-floor bedroom, with its one 
window, and most unlovely outlook, was Mercy’s only source 
of pride. She had pinched herself to buy those inexpensive 
chairs, and the luxury of the Japanese glass, and the lacquered 
tea-tray, and Satsuma cups and saucers, and the turquois and 
absinthe tinted vases, which made her room so different from 
the rooms of most work-girls. She had stained and waxed the 
old deal boards with her own hands, and it was her own labor 
that kept the floor polished and dustless, and the window- 
panes bright and clear. The natural instinct of a lady showed 
itself in that love of fair surroundings. 

I hoped to find your mother with you,” said Lord Cheri- 

# ton. 

“ Why? I received your telegram, and could not under- 
stand what it meant. Is there anything wrong with my 
mother?” 

“ She left her home early this morning — mysteriously — no 
one knows why or wherefore. 1 am intensely anxious to find 
her.” 

“But why? She has been able to take care of herself very 
well for the last twenty years. You have not been particular- 
ly interested in her all that time. Why should you be anxious 
to-day?” 

“ Because I have reason to think that all is not well with 
her— that her mind is not quite right — and 1 am full of fear 
lest she should do something rash.” 

“ God help her!” sighed Mercy, the pale face growing just 
a shade whiter. “ If you had seen much of her in the years 
that are gone, your fears would not have come so late in the 
day.” 

“NWhat do you mean?” 

“ 1 mean that her mind has been unsettled ever since I was 
old enough to observe and to understand her. She had 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


371 


brooded upon one great sorrow until all her thoughts were 
warped and distorted; all charity and kindly feeling were dead 
in her — dead or frozen into a dreadful numbness, a torpor of 
the soul. She never really loved me — me, her only child, who 
tried very hard to win her love. God knows how I loved her, 
having no one else to love. There was always a barrier be- 
tween us — the barrier of some bitter memory. I could never 
get near her heart. 

He did not answer for some minutes, but stood up looking 
out of the window at the dull, dull prospect of slated roof and 
smoke-blackened chimney-pots — prospec^t in which a few red 
tiles or an old gable-enil were as a glimpse of the tropic isles 
or the sunny south, amid the all-pervading gray ness and'gloom 
and cruel monotony of form and hue. He felt a constraint 
upon him such as he had never felt in all his life before — felt 
tongue-tied, helpless, paralyzed by a deep sense of shame and 
self-humiliation before this unacknowledged daughter, who, 
under happier circumstances, might have looked up to him 
and honored him as the first among men. In this bitter hour 
the name that he had won for himself in the world, the fortune 
which his talent had earned for him, were as dirt and ashes — 
the bitter ashes beneath the dazzling brightness of the Dead 
Sea fruit. 

“ Why do you stop in this room, Mercy he asked, abrupt- 
ly; “ why do you condemn yourself to look out upon chimney- 
pots and blackened roofs, when you have all the world to 
choose from if you like? Why, in pity's name, did you refuse 
my offer of an income?" 

“ Because I will take nothing from you — nothing — nothing 
— nothing!" Her lips closed in a narrow line after that 
reiterated word. Her eyes looked straight before her, cold, 
calm, resolute. 

“ Why are you so hard upon me?" 

‘‘ Why? You ask me why — you, who let me live at your 
gates in meek dependence upon your bounty, nameless, fa- 
therless, living a life of miserable monotony with a heart- 
broken woman in whose frozen breast even maternal love was 
dead. You who patted me on the head once in half a year, 
and patronized me, and condescended to me, as if I were of an- 
other race and of a different clay. You, my father— you who 
could be content to let me grow from a child to a woman and 
never once let your heart go out to me, .and never once be 
moved to clasp me in your arms and confess the tie between 
us. You who saw me come to your fine house and go away, 
and often pretended not to see me, or passed me with a side 


372 


THE DAY WJLL COME. 


glance and a little motion of your hand, as if I were a dog that 
ran by you in the street. You, my father — ^you, whose friend 
saw me so friendless and alone that he could lie to me with 
impunity, knowing there was no one in this world to take my 
part or to call him to account for his lies. Had you been 
different, my fate might have been different. 

“ He was a villain, Mercy. God knows, I have suffered 
enough on that score. I would have called him to account, I 
would have punished him; but I had to think of my wife. 1 
dared not' act; there was a monster in my path before which 
the boldest man sometimes turns coward — publicity. Who 
was it told you, Mercy — when was il that you discovered — my 
secret?’ ^ 

“He told me — taunted me with my mother’s story. He 
had guessed it, 1 think; but, though he had no proofs to give 
me, instinct told me that it was true. My mother’s life and 
character had always been a mystery to me. I understood 
both by the light of that revelation.” 

“ He told you the truth, Mercy. Yes, all my life, as re- 
gards you, was a solemn sham. It was your mother’s deter- 
mination to live at Oheriton, and nowhere else, which made 
me a stranger to my own child. Had your home been else- 
where, far from my wife and her surroundings,’! might have 
acted in some wise a father’s part. I might have acknowl- 
edged our relationship; I might have seen you from time to 
time in the freedom of paternal intercourse; I could have in- 
terested myself in your education, watched over your happi- 
ness. As it was, 1 had to play my difficult part as best I 
might. ’ ’ 

“ You would have had to reckon with my mother’s broken 
heart wherever she had lived,” answered Mercy. “ Do you 
think I could have ever valued your fatherly interest, knowing 
the measure of her wrong? In my ignorance I looked up to 
you as our benefactor. You cheat^ me of my gratitude and 
respect — you, who were the cause of all our sorrows. I saw 
my mother’s mind growing more and more imbittered as the 
years went by. My youth was spent with a woman whose lips 
had forgotten how to smile; with a mother, who never spoke a 
motherly word, or kissed her child with a motherly kiss. And 
then when love came — or that which seemed love— can you 
wonder that I was weak and helpless in the hour of that great 
temptation — 1, who had never known what tenderness meant 
before I heard his voice, before his lips touched mine? The 
only happiness 1 ever knew upon this earth was my happiness 
with him. It was short enough, God knows, but it was some- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 373 

thing. It was my only sunshine — the only year in all my life 
in which the world seemed beautiful and life woidh living. 
Yes, it was at least a dream of loving and being loved; but it 
was followed by a bitter waking.'’’ 

He was a scoundrel, Mercy. . You were not his first vic- 
tim; but his youth was past, and 1 believed in his reform. 1 
should not -have asked him to my wife’s house had I not so 
believed. When I heard that he had tempted you away from 
your mother I was in despair. I would have made any sacri- 
fice to save you, except the one sacrifice of facing a hideous 
scandal, except the sacrifice of my social position and my 
wife’s happiness. Had you alone been in question I might 
have taken a bolder and more generous course; but you 
are right when you say I had to reckon with your mother. 
I might have confessed the existence of my daughter — 
might have secured my wife’s kindness and sympathy for 
that daughter; but how could I say to her, ‘ The woman 
who lives beside your gate is the woman who ought to have 
been my wife, and who for ten years was to me as a wife, 
and relied upon my promise that no other woman upon earth 
should ever occupy that place?’ I was fettered, Mercy, caught 
in the toils, powerless to act a noble or a manly part. 1 did 
what I could. I tried to trace you and Tremaine, failed, and 
never knew what had become 6i him till 1 heard oh him three 
years ago, married a second time to a rich Australian, and 
occupying an important position at Brisbane. He w%s a mar- 
ried man when he crossed your path, separated from his wife,^ 
who had not used him overwell. It was the knowledge of his 
domestic troubles that inclined me to hold out the hand of 
friendship to him at that time. He behaved badly to you, I 
fear, my poor girl.” 

‘‘ He only did what most men do, I suppose, under the same 
circumstances. He only acted as you acted to my mother. 
He grew tired of me. Only his weariness came in less than 
ten years; in less than two. He took me roaming all over the 
world in his yacht. Those days and nights at sea, or lying off 
some white city, shining against a background of olive-clad 
hills, were like one long dream of beauty. Sometimes w^e 
lived on shore for a little while, in some obscure town or fish- 
ing village, where there was no one from England to ask who 
we were. We spent one long winter coasting about between 
Algiers and Tunis. I could hardly believe that it was winter 
in that world of purple sea and sky and almost perpetual sun- 
ehine. We spent half a year among the Greek islands; we 
stayed at Constantinople, and sailed from there to Naples. It 


374 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


was at Naples I caught a fever, and lay ill on board the yacht. 
It was a tedious illness, a long night of darkness and delirium. 
When 1 recovered. Colonel Tremaine was gone. He had left 
the yacht on the first day of my unconsciousness, but left me 
in charge of a Sister of Mercy and three sailors. He had sold 
the yacht, which was to pass into the new owner’s possession 
as soon as I was strong enough to go on shore. He left me a 
letter telling me that he had deposited fifty pounds for me at 
the English bankers’, where he had been in the habit of cash- 
ing checks. 1 had been at the bank with him on more than 
one occasion. He advised me to stay in the south, and get a 
situation as governess in an Italian family. He was obliged 
to go back to England on account of monetary difficulties, but 
he hoped to be able to meet me later. He did not even take 
the trouble to tell me where a letter would find him. He had 
abandoned me at the beginning of a dangerous illness — left 
me to live or die — friendless in a foreign land.” 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

“ Poor wretches that depend 
On greatness’ favor dream as I have done, 

Wake and find nothing.” 

Lord C^eritok heard the story of his daughter’s fate in 
silence. It was an old and a common story, and any words of 
reprobation uttered now would have seemed a mockery from 
the lips of the father who had allowed his daughter’s seducer 
to go unpunished. 

“ What did you do in your loneliness?” he asked, after a 
pause. 

“ I wandered from village to village for some months, liv- 
ing as the peasants live. I did not take Colonel Tremaine’s 
advice, and offer myself as a teacher of youth. I did not try 
to enter a respectable home under a false character. I lived 
among peasants and as they lived, and my money lasted a 
long time. I had always been fond of needle-work, so I 
bought some materials before I left Naples, and I used to sit 
in the olive woods, or by the sea-shore, making baby linen, 
which I was able to dispose of when my wanderings brought 
me to Genoa, where I lived in a garret all through the next 
winter. I remained in Italy for more than a year, and then 
my heart sickened even of the beauty of the sea and sky, the 
streets of palaces, the orange-groves and olive woods, the 
bright monotony of loveliness. Some of my own misery 
leemed to have mixed itself with all that was loveliest in that 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


3r5 


southern v/oiid, and I felt as if gray skies and dull streets 
would be a relief to me. So I came to London, and found this 
lodging, and have managed to live — as you see — ever since. I 
have ho wish to live any better. I have only one friend in the 
world. I have no desire to change. If my mother cared for 
me and wanted me I would go to her; but she never wante 
me in the past, I doubt if she will ever want me in the fi.c- 
ure.’^ 

“ Your mother is a most unhappy woman, Mercy, and she 
has made her unhappiness a part of my life, and a part of 
other lives. She left her home this morning, alone, without 
giving any one notice where she was going, or why she was go- 
ing. I am full of fear about her. My only hope was to find 
her here.^^ 

“ And not having found her here, what are you going to 
do? Where will you look for her?^^ 

“ I don^t know. 1 am altogether at fault. She had no 
friends in London or anywhere else. She had isolated herself 
most completely,. At Oheriton she -was respected, but she 
made no friends. How could she in a place where her whole 
existence was a secret? Ah, Mercy, have compassion upon me 
in my trouble — give me something of a child^s love, for the 
burden of my sin is too heavy for me to bear.^^ 

He sunk into a chair, covering his face with his hands, and 
she knew that the strong man was crying like a child. 

Her heart was touched by his distress, as a woman if not as 
a daughter. 

“ I am sorry for you in your trouble,^^ she said, in a low 
voice, “ and I would gladly help you if I could. But I can 
not forget my mother’s broken heart — the slow torture of long 
years. I had to look on and see her suffer, not even knowing 
the cause of her sorrow, utterly unable to comfort her. Sor- 
row had hardened her. She was hard to me, a hard task-mis- 
tress rather than a mother. And now you tell me she has 
gone away, no one knows where. What can I do to help you 
and her?” 

“ God knows if you can do anything, Mercy,” he answered, 
looking up at her gently, relieved somewhat by those unaccus- 
tomed tears. 

He took her hand, which she did not withhold from him. 

Sit down, Mercy,” he said, “ sit here by my side, and let 
us consider calmly what we can do. Your mother has no 
friends to whom she could go, no one, unless it were Miss 
Newton.” , 


376 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


'‘Miss Newton!’" cried Mercy. “What does my mother 
know of Miss Newton?"" 

“ They were acquainted many years ago; but your mother 
would hardly go to her now."" 

“ My mother knew Miss Newton, my one friend?"" 

“ Yes, long ago. How did you come to know her?"" 

“ She sought me out. It is the business of her life to seek 
out those who have most need of her, to whom her friendship 
can do most good. She heard of me from a girl who lives in 
this house, and she came to me and invited me to her lodg- 
ings, and brightened my life by her kindness. And did she 
really know my mother years ago?"" 

“ Yes, more than thirty years ago, when they were both 
young."" 

“ How strange that is!"" 

“ I am thinking, Mercy — I am trying to think — what ref- 
uge your mother could have found in London. Eemember I 
have to think of her as of one who is scarcely accountable for 
her actions. 1 have to think of her as under the influence of 
one fixed idea — not governed by the same laws that govern 
other people."" 

“ I am powerless to help you,"" answered Mercy, hopelessly. 
“ I will do anything you tell me to do; but of all people in 
this world I am least able to advise you. 1 know nothing of 
my mother’s life except as I saw it at Cheriton — one long 
weariness. ” 

“ You shall know all by and by; all. J will stand before you 
as a criminal before his judge. I will lay bare my heart to 
you as a penitent before his father-confessor, and then perhaps, 
when you have heard the whole story, you will take compassion 
upon me; you will understand how hard a part I had to play, 
and that I was not altogether vile. I will say no more about 
your life here, and your future life, as I would have it, until 
that confession has been made. Then it will remain for you 
to decide whether I am worthy to bQ treated in some wise as a 
father. "" 

She sat in silence, with her head bent over her folded hands. 
He looked at the dejected droop of the head, the gray streaks 
in the auburn hair, the hollow cheek, the attenuated features 
aiid wan complexion, and remembered how brilliant a creature 
she had been in the first bloom of her beauty, and with what 
furtive, apprehensive glances he, her father, had admired that 
girlish face. She was handsomer in those days than ever her 
mother had been, with a softer, more refined loveliness than 
the Strangway type. And he bad let this flower grow beside 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


377 


his gate like a weed, and be trampled underfoot like a weed; 
and now the face bore upon it all the traces of ineffaceable 
suffering, the lines about the mouth had taken the same im- 
bittered look that he remembered only too well in Evelyn 
Darcy, that look of silent suffering, of dumb protest against 
fate. 

He watched her for some minutes in an agony of remorse. 
She was his daughter, and it had been his duty to shelter her 
from the storms of life; and he had let the storms beat upon 
that undefended head, he had let her suffer as the nameless 
waifs of this world have to suffer, uncared for, unavenged. 

If she should ever come to forgive him, could he ever for- 
give himself? 

But he had nearer anxieties than these sad thoughts of that 
which might have been and that which was. He had the miss- 
ing woman to think of, and the evil that might come to her- 
self or others from her being at large. He had to speculate 
upon her motive in leaving Cheriton. 

Perhaps it was only a natural result of his interview with 
her yesterday afternoon, when he had shown her the pistol, 
and told her where it had been found, that pistol which he 
and she kiiew so well — one of a pair that had been in her hus- 
band’s possession at the time of her marriage — which had been 
pledged while they were living in Essex Street, and when their 
funds were at the lowest. Slie had kept the duplicate, with 
other duplicates which Darcy’s carelessness ajiandoned to her; 
and afterward some womanish apprehension of danger in the 
somewhat isolated cottage in Camberwell Grove,’ some talk of 
burglarious attacks in the neighborhood, had induced her to 
redeem the pistols, and they had been kept in their case on the 
table beside her bed for years. No burglar had ever troubled 
the quiet cottage, where there were neither silver nor jewels to 
tempt an attack. The pistol-case had never been opened. It 
had been packed up with other things and stored in the Pan- 
technicon, and James Dalbrook had forgotten the existence of 
Captain Darcy’s revolvers till the builder’s foreman showed 
him the pistol that had been found in the well. Then there 
came back upon hini, in a flash, the memory of the case that 
had stood beside his bed, and the fact that the pistols had 
been sent down to Cheriton with Mrs. Darcy’s other goods. 
That pistol could not have passed out of her possession with- 
out her knowledge and consent. If hers was not the hand 
that pulled the trigger, she must, at least, have furnished the 
weapon, and she must have known the murderer. 

He told her as much as this yesterday afternoon, when he 


378 


THE DAY WJLL COME, 


showed her the pistol. She heard him in dogged silence, look- 
ing at him with wide-open eyes, in which the dilatation of the 
pupils never altered. She neither admitted nor denied any- 
thing. He could extort no answer from her, except some 
scornful and evasive retort. And so he left her in despair, 
having warned her that discovery was now a question of time. 
The finding of the pistol would put the police on the right 
track, and link by link the chain of circumstantial evidence 
would be fitted together. 

“ You had better tell me the truth, and let me help you if 
I can,^^ he told her. 

She had acted upqn his warning, perhaps, but without his 
help. It was like her perverse nature to go out into the world 
alone, to make a mysterious disappearance just at the time 
when suspicion might at any moment be directed toward her, 
just when it was most essential that there should be not the 
slightest deviation from the sluggish course of her every-day 
life. 

Lord Cheriton started up suddenly. 

“ Yes, that is at least an idea,^^ he muttered. “ Good-bye, 
Mercy. 1 have just thought of a place where your mother 
might possibly go — a place associated with her past life. It is 
a forlorn hope, but I may as well look for her there. Wher- 
ever and whenever I find her you will come to her, will you 
not, if she should need your love?^'’ 

“ Of course I will go to her; and if she has no other shelter 
I can bring her here. I should not be afraid to work for 
her. 

“ It is cruel of you to talk of working for her. You know 
that the want of money has never been an element in her 
troubles. She might have lived an easy and refined life, 
among pleasant people, if she would have been persuaded by 
me. As it was, I did what I could to make her life comfort- 
able.^^ 

“ Yes, I know she had plenty of money. She gave me ex- 
pensive masters, as if she had been a woman of fortune. I 
used to wonder how she could afford it. We lived very sim- 
ply, almost like hermits, but there seemed always money for 
everything she wanted. Our clothes, our furniture, and books 
seemed far too good for our station. I used to wonder some- 
times, and I have been asked questions sometimes about my 
former home. What did I remember of my childhood? 
Where had I lived before my father died? I could tell people 
nothing. I only remembered a cottage among fields, and the 
faces of the woman who nursed me and her children who 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


379 


played with me. I remembered nothing but the cottage and 
the great corn-fields, and the lanes and hedge-rows, till one 
summer day my mother came in a carriage, and took me on a 
journey by the railroad — a journey that lasted a long time, for 
we had to wait, and change trains more than once; and in the 
evening I found myself at Oheriton. That was all of my life 
that I could recall, and 1 did not even know the name of the 
woman with whom I lived till I was seven years old, or of the 
village near her cottage.’’^ 

“ You were hardly used, Mercy; but it was not all my 
fault. 

He would not tell her that it was his wish to have her reared 
at Myrtle Cottage, where he would have watch^ed her infancy 
and childhood; he would not tell her that it w^s the mother^s 
sensitiveness, her resentful consciousness of her false position, 
which had banished the child. 

You will come to me whenever I summon you, Mercy 
he said. 

‘‘Yes, I will come.^^ 

He held out his hand, and she gave him hers, which was 
cold as death. He drew her to his breast, and kissed the 
pallid, care-worn forehead, and so they parted, father and 
daughter, the daughter acknowledged for the first timQ at 
seven-and-twenty years of age. 

Lord Oheriton hailed the first hansom he found upon his 
way, and told the man to drive him to Camberwell Grove. 

The neighborhood through which he went was curiously un- 
familiar after the changes and forgetfulness of twenty years; 
and yet it was curiously familiar to him, and brought back the 
memory of that dead time, when a man who was himself, and 
yet not himself, had gone to and fro that road until its every 
shop front and every street corner seemed engraven upon his 
brain. 

It is a busy, teeming world, a world of seething humanity, 
jostling, striving, anxious, hollow-cheeked and eager-eyed, 
lie had chosen to plant his hidden Eden upon “ the Surrey 
side,""" and had gone to and fro by that squalid high- way with 
a contented spirit, because , it was a world in which he was 
least likely to meet any of his professional brothers. What 
other barrister in decent practice; above all, what other 
Queen’s Counsel, was likely to pitch his tent at Camberwell? 
There might be old-fashioned men who would be conleut to 
grow their early cucumbers, and gloat over their pines and 
peaches in some citizen’s paradise on Clapham Common, 
filiere might be men who would resign themselves to life at 


aso 


THE BAY WILL COME. 


Wandsworth; but where was the spirit so lowly clad in wig and 
gown who would stoop to live in a place which was accessible 
only by the Elephant and Castle and the Walworth road? Do 
not the very names of those places stink in the nostrils of 
gentility? The Elephant has never held up his trunk since 
the glories of the QiieeiTs Bench departed, since Ichabod was 
written on those walls against which Lord Huntingtower played 
tennis, and in whose shadow so many of earth’s great ones 
have paced up and down the stony yard in the days when the 
noble debtor was still a person ’hpart and distinguished, not 
amenable to the coarse laws which govern the bankrupt 
trader. 

He had borno with the Walworth road, because it lay so far 
out of gentility’s track. The very odor of the neighborhood 
was familiar — the reek of cooked meats and stale vegetables, 
blended with alJ-pervading fumes of beer. But there were 
numerous changes. He missed familiar shops and'^orners. 
All that had been shabby of old looked still shabbier to-day. 
How often he had tramped those pavements, economizing the 
cost of a cab, and not caring to rub shoulders with the hahitves 
of the knife-board on Atlas or Waterloo! The walk had suited 
him. He could think out the brief read overnight as he 
tramped to AVestminster in the morning. How well he re- 
membered the cool breath of the river blowing up the W est- 
minster road on bright spring mornings, when the flower-girls 
were offering violets and primroses at the street corners! How 
well he remembered the change to a cleaner and a statelier 
world when he had crossed the bridge — the solemn grandeur 
of Westminster Hall, the close, sickly atmosphere of the 
crowded courts! Looking back, he wondered how he bore the 
monotony of that laborious life, forgetting that he had been 
borne up and carried along by his ambition, always looking 
onward to the day when his name and fortune should be made, 
and he should taste the strong wine of success. He remem- 
bered what an idle dream Evelyn’s idea of buying the Cheri- 
ton estate had seemed to him when first she mooted it; how 
he had talked of it only to indulge her fancy, as one discusses 
impossible things with a child; and how by slow degrees the 
notion of its feasibility had crept into his mind; how he had 
begun to calculate the possibilities of his future savings; how 
he had covered stray half sheets of paper with elaborate cal- 
culations, taking pleasure in the mere figures as if they were 
actual money. He remembered how wheii he had saved five 
thousand pounds a rabi^ eagerness to accumulate took hold of 
him, and with what keen eyes he used to look at the figures on 


381 


THE DAY WILL COME. 

a brief. He had caught the infection of Evelyn^s sanguine 
visions, and of Evelyn’s parsijmonions habits. They used to 
hang over his bank-book sometimes of an evening, as Paolo 
and Francesca hung over the story of Lancelot, calculating 
how mucli^could be spared to be placed on deposit, how little 
they could contrive to live on for the next quarter. As the 
hoard increased Evelyn grew to grudge herself the smallest 
luxury, a few flowering plants for the drawing-room, a day’s 
hire of the jobbing-gardener, a drive in a hansom to Richmond 
or Greenwich, little pleasures that had relieved the monotony 
of their isolation. 

“ My father can not live many years,” she told James Dal- 
brook, “ and when he dies the estate will be sold. I have 
often heard him say so. ” 

Mr. Dalbrook went on a stolen journey to Cheriton, and saw 
every bit of the estate which he could get to see. He was 
careful to say nothing of this expedition to Evelyn lest she 
should want to go with him, as he felt that her presence would 
have been a difficulty. Some one might have recognized the 
squire’s young daughter in the mature woman. 

He went back to London passionately in love with the prop- 
erty, which he remembered as one of the paradises of his boy- 
hood, in the days when he had been fond of long excursions 
on foot, to Oorfe, or Swanage, or the great sunburned hills by 
the sea. He saw Cheriton Chase now with the entranced eyes 
of an ambitious man to whom territorial possession seemed the 
crowning glory of life. 

He had saved ten thousand pounds — very little compared 
with the sum which would be required; but he told himself 
that when he had amassed another ten he might feel secure of 
being ^able to buy the estate, since it would be easy to raise 
seventy per cent, of the purchase money on mortgage. He 
began to see his way to the realization of that dream. He 
would have to go on living laborious days — to go on with those 
habits of self-denial which had already become a second nature 
• — even after the prize was won; but he saw himself the owner 
of that noble old house, amid a park and woodland that were 
the growth of centuries; and he thought of the delight of re- 
storing and improving and repairing, after fifty years of slip- 
shod poverty and slow decay. 

And now, as the hoard increased to twelve, fifteen, eighteen 
thousand, James Dalbrook began to talk to his companion of 
therir future ownership of Cheriton as a certainty. They 
planned the rooms they were to occupy; they distributed their 
small stock of furniture about the old mansion house — things 


382 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


/ 

/ 


they had bought by slow degrees in the happy hunting-grounds 
of Wardour Street and the Portland road, and which were all 
good of their kind. They discussed the number of servants 
that they could manage to carry on with for the first few years, 
while economy would still be needful. It was understood be- 
tween them, though rarely spoken about, that Tom Darcy 
would be dead before that fruition of their dreams. He had 
been sent off to New Zealand, a broken man. Who could 
doubt that a few years more would see the end of that worth- 
less existence, and then the bond between those two who had 
held to each other so faithfully would be realized, and Evelyn 
could go back to the house in which she was born, its proud 
and happy mistress? 

She had fed upon those dreams, lived upon them, had 
thought of little else in her solitary days, in the isolation of 
her home. She had put away her child with stern resolve that 
no difficulty should arise out of tliai existence when she came 
to take her place in society as James Dalbrook^s wife. She 
never meant to acknowledge the daughter born at Myrtle Cot- 
tage. She would do her duty to the child, somehow; but not 
in that way. 

Lord Cheriton remembered all these things as the cab rattled 
along the Walworth road. Our waking thoughts have some- 
times almost the rapidity of our dreams. He surveyed the 
panorama of the past; recalled the final bitterness of that 
meeting at Boulogne, when he went over to see Mrs. Darcy, 
arid when he had to tell her that he was master of Cheriton 
Chase, by the help of his wife^s dowry, and that he had begun 
life there on a far more dignified footing than they two had 
contemplated. 

She received the announcement with a sullen despair, but 
he could see that it hurt her like the thrust of a sword. She 
stood before him with a lowering brow, white to the lips, her 
thin fingers twisting themselves in and out of each other with 
a convulsive movement, and one corner of the bloodless under- 
lip caught under the sharp white teeth fiercely. 

“ Well,^’ she said at last, “ I congratulate you. Cheriton 
has a new master; and if the lady of the house is not the wom- 
an whose shadow I used to see there in my dreams, it matters 
very little to you. You are the gainer in all ways. You have 
got the place you wanted; and a fair young wife instead of a 
faded — mistress. 

She lifted up her eyes, pale with anguish, and looked at him 
with an expression he had never been able to forget. 

He was silent under this thrust, and then, after a troubled 


THE DAY WILL COME, 


383 


pause, he asked her if she had made up her mind where her 
future days were to be spent. He was only desirous to see her 
settled in some pretty neighborhood, in the nicest house that 
she could find for herself, or that he could choose for her. 

“ Do not let money be any consideration,'’-’ he said. “ My 
fees are rolling in very fast this year, and they are big fees. I 
want to see you happily circumstanced, with Mercy. 

‘‘ There is only one place I care to live in,'’^ she answered, 
“ and that is Cheriton Chase. 

He told her, with a sad smile, that Cheriton was the only 
place that was impossible for her. 

“It is not impossible. Do you think I want to be a fine 
lady, or to tell people that I was once Evelyn Strang way? I 
only want to live upon the soil 1 love, and to see you some- 
times, as you go past my door, There is the west lodge, 
now — one of the loveliest old cottages in England. I loved it 
when I was a girl. Sally Newton and I used to picnic there, 
when my father and I were not on speaking terms. Who is 
living in that cottage now?” 

“ One of the gardeners.” 

“ Turn out the gardener and let me live there.” 

He rejected the idea as preposterous, degrading, that she- 
should live at the lodge gates, she who had once been the 
squire’s daughter; an object of respectful interest to all the 
neighborhood. 

“ Do not talk to me of degradation,” she answered, bitter- 
ly. “ There will be no degradation for me in living at your 
gates, now that you and I are strangers. My degradation be- 
longs to the past. Nothing in the future can touch me. I 
am nameless henceforward, a nullity. ’ ’ 

“ But if you should be recognized there?” 

“ Who is there to recognize me? Do you think there is one 
line or one look of Evelyn Strangway’s sixteen-year-old face 
left in my face to-day?” 

Knowing the portrait in the hall at Cheriton, he was fain to 
confess that the change was complete. It would have been 
difficult for any one to find the lines of that proud young 
beauty in the care-worn features and sunken cheeks of the 
woman who stood before him now. The months that had gone 
since their parting had aged her as much as if they had been 
so many years. 

“ If your husband should find you there?” 

“Notdikely! It is the very last place in which he would 
look for me; and the chances are against his ever returning to 
England. ” * 


384 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


‘‘ Why is your mind set upon living at Cheriton?’^ 

“ Why? Because I have dreamed and thought of that place 
till my love for it has become almost a disease; because 1 have 
not the faintest interest in any othei- spot upon earth. 1 
don’t care how I live there. 1 have no pride left in me. 
Pride, self-respect, care for myself, died a sudden death one 
day you know of, when I found that you had ceased to care 
for me, when 1 awoke from a long dream and knew that my 
place in life was lost. I shall be content to vegetate in that 
cottage — and — and if you think I ought to have Mercy with 
me, why, Mercy can be there too. I shall be Mrs. Jones or 
Mrs. Brown, and there can be no particular reason why Mrs. 
Jones or Mrs. Brown should not have a daughter.” 

She was so earnest, so intent, so resolute upon this, and 
nothing else than this, that he was constrained to yield to her 
wishes, and once having yielded, he did all in his power to 
make her life comfortable and free from humiliation. He had 
the cottage as tastefully restored as if he had been going to 
occupy it himself; he opened an account for Mrs. Porter at a 
Dorchester bank, and paid in five hundred pounds to her 
credit, and he told her that the same would be paid in yearly 
on the first of January. There should be nothing uncertain 
or pinched in her circumstances. 

This being done, he resigned himself as best he might to 
bear the burden of that unwelcome presence at his gates. He 
and the woman who was to have been his wife rarely spoke to 
each other during those long slow years in which the master 
of Cheriton grew in honor and dignity and in the respect of 
his fellow-men. He whose career Evelyn Darcy had watched 
from the very dawn of success was now a personage, a man of 
mark in his native county, a man who could afford to hold 
out the hand of friendship to his less distinguished relatives, 
and who could afford to confess himself the son of a small 
shop-keeper in the county town. 

Lady Cheriton had been inclined to interest herself in the 
lonely woman at the west lodge. She was impressed by the 
unmistakable refinement of Mrs. Porter’s appearance, and 
wanted to befriend her^ but Lord Cheriton had forbidden any 
friendly relations between his wife and the lodge-keeper, on 
the ground that she was a woman of very peculiar temper, 
that she would resent anything like patronage, and that she 
would infinitely prefer being left alone to being taken up or 
petted. The tender-hearted Maria, always submissive to the 
husband she adored, had obeyed without question; but some 
years after when Mercy was gprowing up and being educated 


THE i)AY WILL COME. 


385 


by the best masters available in the neighborhood, Lady Cheri'- 
ton had taken a fancy to the hard-worked girl, and had inter- 
ested herself warmly in her progress; and thus it had hap- 
pened that although Mrs. Porter never was known to cross the 
threshold of the great house, her daughter went there often, 
and was made much of by Lady Oheriton, and admired by 
Juanita, whose accomplishments were still in embryo, while 
Mercy was far advanced in music and painting and modern 
languages. 

“ I suppose her mother means her to go out as a governess 
by and by,^'’ Lady Oheriton told her husband. ‘‘ She is over- 
educated for any other walk in life, and in any case she is 
overworked. I feel very sorry for her when I see how tired, 
she looks sometimes, and how anxious she is about her studies. 
Juanita must never be allowed to toil like that.'’^ 

Lord Oheriton remembered all that had happened with 
reference to the woman who called herself Mrs. Porter in all 
these long years — his daughter Juanita’s life-time. She had 
seen the funeral trains of his infant sons pass through the gate 
beside her cottage — she had seen the little coffins covered with 
snow-white flowers, and she must have known the bitterness 
of his disappointment. She had lived "at the west lodge for 
all these years, and had made no sign of a rebellious heart, of 
anger, jealousy, or revengeful feeling. He had believed that 
she was really content so to live; that in granting what she 
had asked of him he had satisfied her, and that her sciise of 
wrong was appeased. At first he had lived in feverish appre- 
hension of some outbreak or scene — some revelation made to 
the wife he loved, or to be friends whose esteem he valued; 
but as the years went by without bringing him any trouble of 
this kind, he had ceased to think with uneasiness of that sinis- 
ter figure at his gates. 

And now by the light of the hideous confession which he 
carried in his breast pocket he knew that in all those years 
she had been cherishing her sense of wrong, heaping up anger, 
and revenge, and malice, and every deadly feeling engendered 
of disappointed love, against the day of wrath. Could he 
wonder if her mind had given way under that slow torture, 
until the concealed madness of years culminated in an act of 
wild revenge, a seemingly motiveless crime? Heaven knows 
by what distorted reasoning she had arrived at the resolve to 
strike her deadly blow there rather than elsewhere. Heaven 
knows what sudden access of mnlignity might have beenvausecl 
by the spectacle of the honey-moon lovers and their innocent 
bliss. 


13 


B86 


THE DAY WILL COME. 

The cab had turned inio Camberwell Grove, and now he 
asked himself if it were not the wildest fancy to suppose that 
she might have gone back to Myrtle Cottage, or that she 
might be hanging about the neighborhood of her old home. 
The cottage was in all probability occupied, and even if she 
had wandered that way she would most likely have come and 
gone before now. The idea had flashed into his mind as he 
sat in Mercy^s room, the idea that in her distracted state all 
her thoughts might revert to the past, and that her first im- 
pulse might lead her to revisit the house in which she had 
lived so long. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

The love of these is like the lightning spear, 

And shrivels whom it touches. They consume 
All things within their reach, and, last of all, 

Their lonely selves.” 

The cottage was to be let. A board offering it upon a re- 
pairing lease announced the fact. 

Lord Cheriton opened the familiar gate. The very sound 
with which it swung back as he passed recalled a life that was 
gone, that had left nothing but an exceeding bitter sorrow. 
How weedy and dejected the narrow garden looked in the sun- 
shine! how moss-grown the gravel path which he and Evelyn 
had once taken such pains to weed and roll, in those early 
days when that modest suburban retreat seemed a happy 
home, and the demon of weariness had not yet darkened their 
threshold! 

He entered at the well-remembered door under the stucco 
porch over which the 'Virginia creeper hung in ran.k luxuri- 
ance. The house was not unoccupied, for slipshod feet came 
along the passage, and he heard children's voices in the back 
premises. 

A slatternly woman, with a year-old baby on her left arm, 
opened the door. 

“ Has a lady called here this morning he asked. 

“ Yes, sir, there is a lady here now — in the drawing-room,^^ 
the woman answered, eagerly. “I hope you belong to her, 
for Eve been feeling a bit nervous about her, with me and the 
children alone in the house, and my husband not coming back 
till night-time. I^m afraid she^s not quite right in her head.'’^ 

‘‘ Yes, I belong to her. 1 have come to fetch her.^^ 

He went into the drawing-room — the room that had looked 
pretty and picturesque enough in those unforgotten days — a 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


387 


small room furnished with quaint old secretaire and book-case, 
Chippendale chairs, and a carved oak table, a pair of old blue 
and white jars on the top of a dark mahogany bureau, brass 
fender and fire-irons that used to glitter*in the fire-light, sober 
brown damask curtains, and half a dozen Bartolozzi engrav- 
ings of rustic subjects, in neat oval frames — a room that 
always looked like a Dutch picture. 

Now that room was the picture of desolation. For furniture 
there was nothing but a shabby Pembroke table, wanting two 
casters, and two old cane-seated chairs, in each of which the 
cane was broken and bulging. A dilapidated doll, in a dirty 
red gauze frock, sprawled amid the dirt on the bare floor, and 
a tattered rug lay in front of the fireless hearth. 

Mrs. Porter was sitting with her elbows on the table, and 
her head resting on her clasped hands. She did not notice his 
approach till he was standing close behind her, when she 
looked up at him. 

At first her gaze expressed trouble and bewilderment; then 
her face brightened into a quiet smile, a look of long ago. 

“ You are earlier than usual, James, she said, holding out 
her hand. 

He took the hand in his; it was hot and dry, as if with a 
raging fever. It was the hand of a murderess; but it was also 
the hand of his victim, and he could not refuse to take it. 

“Was your work over so soon to-day she asked. “I’m 
afraid it will be ever so long before dinner will be ready, and 
the house is all in a muddle — everything wretched ” — looking 
about her with a puzzled air. “ 1 can’t think what has hap- 
pened to! the rooms,” she muttered. “ Servants are so 
troublesome.” 

She passed her hand across her forehead, as if her head were 
paining her, and then looked at him helplessly. 

“You are ill, Evelyn,” he said, gently. 

It was twenty years since he had called her by the name that 
had been so often on his lips in this house. It was almost as 
if the very atmosphere of the house, even in its desolation, re- 
called the old link between them, and made him forgetful of 
what had happened in Dorsetshire. 

“No. I have a headache, that is all. I shall set to work 
presently and make everything comfortable for you. Only I 
can’t find Mary — I can’t get on without Mary. I don’t like 
the look of that charwoman—^ wretched, untidy creature — 
and I don’t know what she has done with the furniture. I 
suppose she moved it in order to clean the rooms. It is just? 


388 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


like their tricks, clearing out the furniture and then dawdling 
ever so long before they begin to scrub the floors. 

He looked at her earnestly, wondering whether she was pre- 
tending, whether »he had repented that written acknowledg- 
ment of her crime, and was acting madness. No, it was real 
enough. The eyes, with their dull fixed look and dilated 
pupils, the troubled movements of the hands, the tremulous 
lips, all told of the unsettled brain. There was but one course 
before him, to get her madness established as an accepted fact 
before there was any chance of her crime being discovered. 

“Do not trouble about anything,^’ he said, gently. “I 
will get some of the furniture brought presently, and I will 
get you a servant. Will you wait quietly here, while 1 see 
about two or three small matters?^^ 

“ Yes, 1 will wait, but donT be long. It seems such a long 
while since yesterday, she said, looking round the room in a 
forlorn way, “ and everything is so strangely altered. DonT 
be long, if you must go out. 

He promised to be back in half an hour, and then he went 
out and spoke to the woman. 

“ How did she come here, and when?^' 

“ She walked up to the door. It was just dinner-time — half 
past twelve o’clock. I thought it was some one to see the 
house, so I let her in without asking any questions, and I 
showed her all the rooms, and it was some time before I saw 
she was wrong in her head. She looked about her just the 
same as people mostly do look, and she was very thoughtful, 
as if she was considering whether the place would suit. And 
then, after she’d been a long time looking at the rooms and 
the garden, she went back into the drawing-room and sat 
down at the table. I told her I should be glad if she could 
make it convenient to leave, as I had my washing to do. But 
she said she lived here, this was her home, and she told me to 
go away and get on with my work. She gave me such a scare 
that I didn’t know how to answer her. She spoke very mild, 
and I could see that she was a lady; but I could see that she 
was out of her mind, and that frightened me, for fear she 
should take a violent turn, and I all alone in the house with 
those young children. I was afraid to contradict her, so I just 
let her please herself and sit down in the drawing-room alone 
while I got on with my bit of washing, and kept the children 
well out of the way. I never felt more thankful in my life 
than when you knocked at .the door. ” 

“lam going as far as the post-oftice to send ofl some tele- 
grams, and I want you to take care she doesn’t leave this 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


389 


house while I^m away.^’ He emphasized his request with a 
sovereign. 

“ Thauk you kindly, sir. 1^11 do my best. I^m sure Pm 
sorry for her with all my heart, poor dear lady.-’^ 

“ And 1 want you to give me the use of this house for to- 
day — and possibly for to-night, if by any chance I should not 
be able to get her away to-night.^’’ 

“Yes, sir; you are free and welcome to the house, as far as 
it^s mine to give leave — and it^s been empty too long for there 
to be much chance of a tenant turning up between now and. 
to-morrow. 

“ Very good; then I shall send in a little furniture — just 
enough to make her comfortable for a few hours — and when I 
come back you can get her something to eat, and make her 
some tea.^^ 

“ Yes, sir. You won^t be gone long, I hope, for fear she 
should turn violent/’ 

“ She will not do that. She has never been violent.” 

“lam very glad to hear that. Appearances are so deceit- 
ful sometimes when folks are wrong in their heads.” 

Lord Oheriton had told the cabman to wait. He got into 
the cab and drove to the nearest upholsterer’s, where he hired 
a table, a comfortable sofa, a couple of chairs, a small square 
carpet, some pillows and blankets, in the event of Mrs. Porter 
havjng to bivouac in Myrtle Cottage. He meant her only to 
leave that shelter for a place of restraint, under medical care. 

This done, he went to the post-office and telegraphed first to 
‘Marian Gray, Hercules Buildings: 

“ Your mother is at Myrtle Cottage, Camberv/ell Grove, 
and very ill. Go to her without delay. “Cheritoe’.” 

His second telegram was to Dr. Davidson, Welbeck Street: 

“ Meet me as soon as you possibly can at Myrtle Cottage, 
Camberwell Grove, and send a trained nurse, experienced in 
mental cases, to the same address. I want your advice upon a 
very serious case, in which time is of vital importance.” 

He sent another telegram to another medical man. Dr. Wil- 
mot, also an old acquaintance, and a fourth to Theodore Dal- 
brook, at the Priory: • 

“Mrs. Porter is in London, and in my care. You need 
have no further apprehension.” 

He was back at Myrtle Cottage within the half hour, and 
was able to direct the men who had just brought a small van 


390 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


containing the furniture. He saw the things carried into the 
room that had been the dining-room, which was empty — the 
policeman’s family preferring to camp in the kitchen — and 
saw them arranged there with some appearance of comfort. 
Then he went back to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Porter 
was standing at the window, staring at the weeping-ash. 

I didn’t know the tree was so big,” she muttered. 

“ The dining-room is in better order,” he said, gently; 

“ will you come and sit there while they get you some tea?” 

“ Yes, James,” she answered, meekly; and then she added, 
with almost the voice and manner of twenty years ago, “ d'ell 
me about your day.” 

She followed him into the other room, and seated herself 
opposite him, looking at him expectantly. Tell me about 
your day in the law courts. Was it dull or interesting? Had 
you any great case on? 1 forget. I forget.” 

She had always questioned him on his return from the law 
courts, she had read the reports of all his cases, and all his 
rivals ’.cases, interesting herself in everything that concerned 
his career. And now there was so much of the past in her 
manner that his heart ached as he listened to her. He had not 
the heart to humor her delusion. 

“ I have sent for your daughter,” he said, gravely, thinking 
that name might bring her back to a sense of the present time. 

She will be here before long, 1 believe. I hope you will re- 
ceive her kindly. ” 

“ Why have you sent for her?” she cried, vexed and startled. 

“ She is very well where she is — happy and well. The nurse 
told me so in her last letter. I can’t have her here, you know 
that, James; you know how people would talk by and by — 
how they would ferret out the truth—by and by, when we 
want to stand clear of the past — ” 

‘‘ Evelyn, the past is long past, and our child is a woman— 
a broken-hearted penitent. 1 want you to take her to your 
heart again, if you have any heart left in you. ” 

“ I have not,” she cried, with a sudden change, appalling 
in its instantaneousness. “ My heart died within me twenty 
years ago, when you broke it; in this house, yes, in this house, 
James Dalbrook. HJod help me! I have been dreaming! T 
thought I was living here again in the old time, and that you 
had come home to me, as you used to come, before you broke 
your promise and abandoned me to marry a rich young wife. 
Heart! No, I have a fiery scorpion here, where my heart used 
to be. Do you think if I had a heart I could have killed him \ 
—that young man, who never injured me by so much as one v 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


391 


scornful word? It was the thought of your daughter that 
maddened me — the thought of her happiness, the sound of 
the church-bells and the cheering, and the sight of the flags 
and garlands and laurel arches — while my daughter, your 
nameless, unacknowledged child, was an outcast, and 1 who 
should have been your wife, and the happy mother of just as 
happy a bride, I was living in that silent solitary cottage alone 
and unloved — upon the land where my father and his fore- 
fathers had been owners of the soi^. I had dreamed the dream 
and you had realized it. All. through those moonlight nights 
I was awake and roaming about in the park, from midnight 
till dawn, thinking, thinking, thinking, till I felt as if my 
brain must burst with the agony of thought. And then I re- 
membered Tom Darcy ^s pistols, and I took one of them with 
me of a night. I hardly knew why I carried that pistol about 
with me, but I felt a necessity to kill something. Once I was 
near shooting one of the fallow-deer, but the creature looked 
at me with its plaintive eyes, and I fondled him instead of kill- 
ing him. And then I took to prowling about my house, and 
I saw those two in the lamplit room, in their wedded happi- 
ness — their wedded happiness, James, not such a union as 
ours, secret, darkened by a cloud of shame. 1 saw your 
daughter in her bright young beauty, the proud, triumphant 
wife: and then a devilish thought took hold of me-- the 
tliQiught of seeing her widowed, broken-hearted; the thought 
that I might be her evil destiny, that just by stretching out 
my arm and pulling a trigger I could bring down all that 
pride into the dust — could bring youth and beauty down to 
my level of dull despair. 

It was a devilish thought. 

“ It was; but it was my thought all the same; for three days 
and three nights it was never absent from my mind. God 
knows how I got through the common business of the day, how 
the few people with whom I came in contact did not see mur- 
der in my face*! I watched and waited for my opportunity; 
and when the moment came I did not waver. There are old 
people at Cheriton who could tell you that Evelyn Strangway 
at fifteen years old was as good a shot as either of her brothers. 
My hand had not forgotten its cunning; and your daughter was 
a widow three weeks after she was made a wife. By so much 
as she was happier than I by so much was her joy briefer than 
mine.’’^ 

She sunk into a corner of the large arm-chair and covered 
her face with her hands, muttering to herself. He heard the 
words, “ I made myself her evil destiny; 1 was her fate — 


392 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


Nemesis, Nemesis! The sins of the fathers! It is the Script- 
ure. 

He could not stay in the room with her after that confes- 
sion. She had been perfectly coherent in telling the story of 
her crime; and it seemed to him that even now she gloated 
over the evil she had wrought — that had it been in her power 
to undo her work by the lifting of her hand she would hardly 
have used that power. She seamed a malignant spirit, rejoic- 
ing in evil. 

He went out into the passage and told the policeman^s wife 
to look after her, and then he went to the desolate drawing- 
room and walked up and down the bare boards, waiting for 
the arrival of one or both of the doctors. 

What would they think of her mental condition? She had 
been curiously coherent just now. The temporary delusion 
had passed away like a cloud. She had spoken as a person 
fully conscious of her acts, and accountable for them. Judged 
by her speech just now, she was a criminal who deserved the 
sternest measure of the law. 

But he who knew of those long years of brooding, he who 
knew the story of her wrongs, and how those wrongs must 
have acted upon that proud and stubborn spirit, to him there 
seemed little doubt that her mind had long lost its balance, 
and that her crime had been the culminating crisis of a long, 
period of , melancholia. He waited the verdict of the doctors 
with acutest anxiety, for only in an asylum did he see safety 
for this unhappy sinner. The finding of the pistol would 
inevitably be talked about at Cheriton, and it was possible 
that at any moment suspicion might take the right direction. 
To get her away, to get her hidden from the world, was his 
most ardent desire; but this was not inconsistent with his de- 
sire to spare her, to do the best that could be done for her. 
The thought that he had ruined her life, that his wrong-doing 
was at the root of all her miseries, was never absent from his 
mind. 

Dr. Davidson was the first to arrive. He was a man of 
supreme refinement, gentle, compassionate, an artist by talent 
and temperament, intellectual to the tips of his fingers. He 
had made insanity and the care of the insane the work of his 
life, as his father and grandfather had done before him, and 
he enjoyed the privilege of having been born in an age of en- 
lightenment, which they had not even foreseen in their hap- 
piest anticipations. He had met Lord Cheriton often in Lon- 
don society, and had visited him in the country, and they were 
as close friends as two busy men of the world can be. 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


393 


He was mystified by so sudden a summons and to such a 
locality; but he had too much tact to betray any surprise. He 
listened quietly to Lord Cheriton’s brief explanation that he 
was wanted to form an opinion .of a dependent whose state of 
mind had given cause for uneasiness. 

“ I will say very little about her till you have seen her/’ 
said Cheriton. ‘‘ If it should appear to you and to my friend 
Wilmot, whom 1 have asked to meet you, if you should decide 
that she ought to be placed under restraint, I should wish her 
to be removed immediately to your house at Cheshunt. I 
know that she will be made as happy there as her state of 
mind will admit, and I shall rely upon your kind consideration 
for making this a special case.” 

“ You may be assured I shall do my uttermost for any one 
in whom you are interested, my dear Cheriton; but indeed I 
think you must know that 1 do my uttermost in every case. 
Ik is only in some small details that I can ever show special at- 
tention. Is this poor lady very violent?” 

“ No, she is very quiet.” 

“ And there is no suicidal mania, I hope?” 

“ I have seen no evidence of it; but she left her home in 
rather a strange and motiveless manner this morning, and 
that, coupled with other indications in the past, gave me the 
alarm. ” 

Has she any delusions?” 

“ Yes, it was under a delusion that she came to this empty 
' house. She lived here many years ago, and on talking to her 
just now I found her unconscious of the lapse of time, and 
fancying that all things were still as they were when she was a 
young woman.” 

“ Has she had any illness lately?” 

‘‘ None that I know of.” 

“I fear there can be little doubt as to her malady. Will 
you take me to her? She will be less alarmed if you are with 
me. Oh, by the bye, the nurse you asked for will be here 
almost immediately.” 

“lam glad of that. There is only a wretched slattern in 
the house, whom I don’t like to see in attendance upon my 
poor friend.” 

Lord Cheriton and the doctor went into the room where Mrs. 
Porter was sitting facing the window, staring moodily at the 
trailing tendrils of Virginia creeper and passion-flower hanging 
from the roof of the veranda and shutting out the light. There 
was something unspeakably desolate in that glimpse of neglect- 


394 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


ed garden seen athwart that neglected verdure, with the smoky 
London sky as a background. i 

She looked round quickly at the sound of footsteps, and | 
started up from her chair. 

“ Who is this man?^^ she asked, turning to Lord Cheriton. i 
‘‘Are you going to send me to prison? You have lost no 
time.^’ 

“ This gentleman is my old friend, and he is interested in 
helping you it he can.^^ !■ 

“ You had better leave us together, said Dr. Davidson, ij 
gently. | 

Lord Cheriton left the room silently, had paced the narrow | 
entrance hall, listening with intense anxiety to the low mur- | 
muring sound of voices on the other side of the door. 

-J’here were no loud tones from either speaker. There could : 
be neither anger nor profound agitation upon Mrs. Porter's 
side, the listener thought, as he awaited the result of that in- ' 
terview. A knock at the hall door startled him from his ex- 
pectancy, and he hastened to admit the new arrival. 

It was his other medical friend. Dr. Wilmot, stout and 
jovial, more adapted to assist at a wedding than a funeral, ; 
more fitted to prescribe for wine-bibbing aldermen or dowagers i 
who needed to be “ kept np on Eoederer or Mumm than to ' 
stand beside the bed of agony, or listening to the ravings of a | 
mind distraught. Dr. Davidson came out of the dining-room | 
at the sound of the voices in the hall. 

“ Ah, how do you do, Wilmot? You will have very little ' 
trouble in making up your mind about this poor soul. Go in 
and talk to her while I take a turn in the garden with his lord- 
ship. 

He opened the dining-room door, and Dr. Wilmot passed, 
in, smiling, agreeable, and beginning at once in an oily. voice: 

“ My dear lady, my friend Davidson suggests that I should 
have a little chat with you while — while Lord Cheriton arid he 
are admiring the garden. A very nice garden, upon my word, 
for the ini mediate vicinity of London. One hardly expects as 
nice a bit of ground nowadays. May I feel your pulse? 
Thanks, a little too fast for perfect health." 

“ What do you and that other man mean by all this pre- 
tense?" she exclaimed, indignantly. “I am not ill. Are 
you a doctor or a policeman in disguise? If you want to take^ 
me to prison I am ready to go with you. I came to London 
on purpose to give myself up. You need not beat about the 
bush. I am ready." 

" Mad, very mad," thought Dr. Wilmot, detaining the ua- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 395 

willing wrist, and noting its tumultuous pulsations by the sec- 
ond hand of his professional watch. 

Lord Cheriton and Dr. Davidson were pacing slowly up and 
down the moss-grown gravel while this was happening. 

“ How did you find her?^'’ 

“ Curiously calm and collected for the first part of the inter- 
view. Had it not been for her troubled eye, and the nervous 
movements of her hands, I should have supposed her as sane 
as you or I. 1 talked to her of indifferent subjects, and her 
answers were consecutive and reasonable, although it was evi- 
dent she resented my presence. It was only when I asked her 
why she had come to London without giving her friends notice 
that she became agitated and incoherent, and began to talk 
about having committed a murder, and wishing to give herself 
up and make a full confession of her guilt. Instead of wait- 
ing for the law to find her out she was going to find the law. 
She had no fear of the result. She had long been tired of her 
life, and she was not afraid of the disgrace of a felon^s death. 
Her whole manner as she said this showed a deep-rooted de- 
lusion, and l am of opinion that the mind has been unhinged 
for a long time. That notion of an imaginary crime is often 
a fixed idea in lunacy. A madman will conceive a murder 
that never took place, or he will connect himself with some 
actual murder and insist upon his guilt, often with an extraor- 
dinary appearance of truth and reality, until he is shaken by 
severe cross-examination.^^ 

“ You will receive her in your house at once?^’ 

“ I have no obj,ection if Wil mob’s opinion coincides with 
mine. 1 have no doubt as to her being in a condition to re- 
quire restraint. She is not violent at present, but if she is not 
taken care of she will go wandering about in search of a police- 
magistrate to whom to make her statement; and with increas- 
ing excitement there will be every likelihood of acute mania. 
Ah^ here comes Wilmot. Well, what do you think of the 
case, Wilmot?” 

“ Mad, undeniably mad. She took me for a policeman in 
disguise, and raved about a murder for which she wanted to 
give herself up to justice.” 

'‘A fixed delusion, you see,” said Davidson, with a gentle 
sigh. Do you know how long she has had this idea, Cheri- 
ton?” 

“ Indeed I do not. Her position on my estate is a peculiar 
one. She lived at one of the lodges, but her status was not 
that of an ordinary dependent. She was her own mistress, 
and lived a very solitary life— after her daughter left her. 


396 THE DAY WILL COME. 

I have sent for the daughter, who will be here presently, I 
hope. My first notice of anything amiss was a hint dropped 
by a young medical man who was visiting at Cheriton. He 
saw Mrs. Porfcer, and formed the opinion that she either had 
been off her head in the past or was likely to go off her head 
in the future. That startled me, and 1 had it in my mind to 
ask you to come down to see her, Davidson, when there came 
— the sudden departure of this morning — a departure which 
was so opposed to her former habits that it made me anxious 
for her safety. I followed her to London — first to her daugh- 
ter's lodging, and then here, where by mere guess work I found 
her.'^ 

“ Do you think that it may be the sad event of last year — 
the murder of your son-in-law — which has put this notion into 
her head.^^^ 

“ It is not unlikely. That dreadful event made a profound 
impression upon everybody at Cheriton. She, being a reserved 
and thoughtful woman, may have brooded over it.^^ 

Until she grew to associate herself with the crime,^^ said 
Wilmot. “ Nothing more likely. Was the murderer never 
found, by the way?’' 

“ Never." 

“But there can be no suspicion against this lady, 1 con- 
clude. She can have been in no way concerned in the crime?" 

“ I think you have only to lopk at her in order to be satis- 
fied upon that point," said Lord Cheriton; and the two physi- 
cians agreed that the poor lady in question .was not of the 
criminaJ type, and that nothing was more common in the his- 
tory of mental aberration than the hallucination to which she 
was a victim. 

“ Those monotonous lives of annuitants and genteel depend- 
ents, exempt from labor, and to the outward eye full of placid 
contentment, do not infrequently tend toward madness," said 
Dr. Wilmot. “ I have seen more than one such case as this. 
There are some minds that have no need of action or variety, 
some natures which can vegetate in a harmless nullity; there 
are other tempers which prey upon themselves in solitude, and 
brood upon fancies till they lose touch of realities. This lady 
is of the latter type, highly organized, sensitive to a marked 
degree, of the gemis-irritabile," ^ 

“ You will take all necessary steps at once?" said Lord 
Cheriton, looking from one doctor to the other. 

Both were consentient. The nurse arrived while they were 
together in the drawing-room signing the certificate. It was 
six o’clock, and the shadows were deepening in the room where 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


397 


Mrs. Porter was sitting quiescent, silent, in a kind of apathy 
from which she was scarcely roused by the entrance of the 
nurse from Cheshunt, a tall, comely looking woman of about 
thirty, neatly dressed, and with some pretension to refinement 
of manner. 

Mrs. Porter sat there in her dull lethargy, the food that had 
been prepared for her untasted at her side. The nurse looked 
at the patient with a keen professional eye, and from the 
patient to the tray where an ill-cooked chop stagnated in a 
pool of grease; and where- the unused tea-cup showed that even 
the feminine refreshment of tea had failed to tempt her. 

“ She hasnT eaten anything, said the nurse, “ and she 
looks weak and wasted, as if she had been for a long time 
without food. Tout’d better send for some Braiid’s Essence 
and a little brandy; she ought to be kept up somehow, if she 
is to be taken to Cheshunt to-night. It wilJ be a long diive.'’^ 

Lord Cheriton dispatched the policeman^s wife to the near- 
est chemist^s and the nearest wine merchant's, while he went 
himself to a livery-stable, and ordered a brougham and pair to 
be at Myrtle Cottage at seven o’clock. The certificate had 
been signed, and there was nothing to hinder the removal of 
the patient, ^e found Mercy with her mother upon his re- 
turn, but the nibther had given no sign of recognition, and the 
daughter sorrowfully acknowledged the sad necessity of the 
case when Dr. Davidson gently explained her mother’s condi- 
tion to her. 

‘‘ I am not surprised,” she said, with sad submission, “ 1 
saw it coming years ago. I have lain awake many a night 
when I was a girl listening to her footsteps as she walked up 
and down her bedroom, and to the heart-broken sigh that she 
gave every now and then, in the dead of the night, when she 
thought there was no one to hear her.” 

An hour later the woman who for twenty years had been 
known as Mrs. Porter, and who was to carry that name to her 
dying day, was on her way to the Grange, Cheshunt, with her 
daughter Mercy, and the nurse in the carriage with her. She 
had made no resistance, had gone where she was asked to go 
with an apathetic indifference, had given no trouble; but 
although her daughter had been with her for an hour, doing 
all that tender attention could do to awaken her memory, there 
bad not been a word or a look to betoken consciousness of her 
existence. 

Yet it was clear that the mental powers were only clouded, 
not extinguished; for, as Lord Cheriton stood a little way out- 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


Ms 

side the porch watching her as she passed out to the carriage, 
she stopped suddenly and looked at him. 

“ Will you and I ever meet again, James Dalbrook?^^ she 
asked, solemnly. 

He paled at the address in those clear, incisive tones, dread- 
ing what she might say next. 

“ I think it may be better we should not meet,^^ he said, 
gloomily. “ 1 have placed you in the care of those who will 
do the best that can be done for you.^^ 

“You are sending me to a mad-house, in the care of a mad 
doctor. That is your substitute for Cheriton Chase; the home 
1 used to dream about, ages ago, in this house; the home you 
and I were to have shared, as man and wife. It was my birth- 
place, James, and I would to God it had been my grave before 
I ever looked upon your face!’^ 

The nurse hustled her charge into the carriage, muttering 
something about “ delusions;^ ^ but Dr. Davidson was too shrewd 
a student of humanity not to perceive some meaning in these 
distinct utterances. He had no doubt that Mrs. Porter was 
deranged, and a person who would be the better for the moderate 
restraint. of a well-ordered asylum, but he had also no doubt 
that she had her lucid intervals, and that in this farewell 
speech she had let in the light upon her past gelations with 
James Dalbrook, first Baron Cheriton. 

That revelation accounted for some points in the law lord^s 
conduct which had hitherto been incomprehensible to his friend 
the doctor. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

“ Mine after-life! what is mine after-life? 

My day is closed! the gloom of night is come! 

A hopeless darkness settles o’er my fate!” 

It seemed to Lord Cheriton as he drove to Victoria Street in 
Dr. Davidson^s brougham that the day which had just come 
to an end had been the longest day of his life. He looked 
back at the sunny morning hour in which he had lingered over 
the business of the toilet, brooding upon that discovery of the 
pistol, his spirits weighed down by a vague foreboding, a dim 
horror of approaching*evil, scarcely able to measure the extent 
of his own fears. He recalled the moment at which his valet 
brought him Theodore^s brief summons to the west lodge — a 
moment that had given new reality to all he dreaded — a sum- 
mons which told him that the shadowy horror which had been 
beside his pillow all through the night was going to take a 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


399 


tangible shape. Oh, God, how long it seemed since that pen- 
ciled line was put into his hand — since he stood in the blind- 
ing sunshine staring at the curt summons— before he recovered 
himself so far as to turn to his servant with his habitual grave 
authority, and give some trivial order aJ)out his overcoat! 

Since then what slow agonies of apprehension, what self- 
_ abasement before the daughter whom he met for the first time 
as his daughter, face to face! What terror lest the woman 
whom his perfidy had driven to madness and to crime should 
be called upon to answer to the law for that crime, while 
England should ring with the story of Ids treachery, and Ids 
hidden sin! He felt as if he had lived through half a life-time 
of shame and agony between the vivid light of the August 
mornii}g and the cool gray shadows of the August night. He 
leaned back in his corner of the cozy little brougham pale and 
dumb, a worn-out man, and his friend the physician respected 
his silence. 

“Will you come home and dine with me, Oheriton?^^ said 
Hr. Davidson, as they crossed the bridge. “ It may be pleas- 
anter for you than the solitude of your own rooms. 

“ You are very good. Ho, I am not fit for society^ — not 
even for yours. 1 am deeply indebted to you; 1 feel that you 
are indeed my friend, and that you will do all that caii be 
done to make that broken life yonder endurable. 

“ You may be sure of that. I would do as much were Mrs. 
Porter a nameless waif whom 1 had found by the road-side; 
but as your friend she will have an unceasing interest for me. 
Shall you stay long enough in town to be able to spare time to 
go and see her at the Grange?’’ 

“ No, I must go back to Dorsetshire to-morrow. 1 doubt if 
I shall ever see her again. Accept that fact as the strongest 
proof of my confidence in you. Had I any doubt as to her 
treatment'! would see her from time to time, at whatever cost 
of pain to myself.” 

“ There is nothing but pain, then, in your present feeling 
about that poor lady?’^ 

“ Nothing but pain.” 

“And yet— forgive me if I touch an old wound— I think 
you must have loved her once?” 

The shadows were deepening, the lamps shone with faint 
yellow light upon the gray stone parapet, and the interior of 
the carriage was very dark. Perhaps it was the darkness 
which emboldened Dr. Davidson to push his inquiry to this 
point. 


400 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


You aie right/^ his friend answered, slowly, I loved her 
once. 

The brougham stopped at his lordship’s door in Victoria 
Street, and then drove northward with the physician. There 
was time for much serious reflection between Westminster and 
Welbeck Street. 

“ My new patient must be carefully looked after,” mused 
the doctor, “ for Pm afraid there’s more meaning in her self- 
accusation than there generally is in such cases, and that Sir 
Godfrey Carmichael’s murderer is now in my keeping. ” 

The long August passed very quietly at Milbrook Priory. 
Lady Cheriton arrived in the afternoon, and the three genera- 
tions spent the summer hours on the lawn, mother and daugh- 
ter sitting at work under the tulip-trees, grandson and nurse 
in that state of perpetual motion which is infancy’s' only 
alternative with perpetual slumber. 

Theodore spent his afternoon in a somewhat restless fashion, 
and appeared as if possessed by a rage for locomotion. He 
rambled about the grounds, explored the shrubberies, and 
every yard of the plantation that girdled the little park. He 
went to both lodges, and talked to the care-taker at each. He 
made two different excursions to the village, on pretense of 
making inquiries at the post-office, but in reality with the idea 
of meeting with, or hearing of, Mrs. Porter, should she have 
wandered that way. He behaved like a member of the secret 
police who had been charged with the guardianship of the most 
precious life in the land; and if his movements betrayed the 
nervous anxiety of the amateur, rather than the business-like 
tranquillity of the professional, he made up in earnestness for 
what he lacked in training and experience. 

It was on his return from his second sauntering perambula- 
tion of the village that he found Lord Cheriton ’s telegram 
waiting for him at the Priory. The relief that message brought 
was unspeakable, and his countenance showed the change in 
his feelings when he rejoined the two ladies on the lawn. 

“ Something very pleasant must have happened to you, 
Theodore,” said Juanita. “ You have been looking the' pict- 
ure of gloom all day, and now you are suddenly radiant. 
Have you been talking to one of the vicar’s pretty daughters?” 

“No, Juanita; neither of those wax-doll beauties glorified 
my path. I heard their treble voices on the other side of the 
holly hedge as I passed the vicarage, and I’m afraid they were 
quarreling. I have had good news from London.” 

“ From my father?” 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


401 


^ “Yes.^^ 

“ Oh, Theodore, why do you torture me by hiding things 
from me? Something has happened, 1 know.^^ 

“You will know all in a few days, Juanita. Thank God, a 
great fear that has haunted me for some time past is now at 
an end. I can look at you and your child without seeing the 
shadow of an enemy across your path."’’’ 

She looked at him searchingly. 

“ All this amounts to nothing,'’^ she said. “ I have never 
feared for myself or thought of myself. Will my husband’s 
death be avenged, and soon, soon, soon? That is the question.” 

“ That is a question which you yourself may be called upon 
to answer — and very soon,” he said. 

He would say no more, in spite of her feverish eagerness, 
her impatient questionings. 

“I have changed my mind, Juanita,” he said, presently. 
“ I will not bore you with my company till I am free to an- 
swer your questions. The motive for my presence in this house 
is at an end.” 

“ Is it? What has become of the suspicious characters my 
father talked about?” 

“ The danger has not come this way, as he feared it might.” 

“ Stay,” she said. “Whether there is danger or not you 
are going to stay. I will not be played fast and loose with by 
any visitor. Mother likes to have you here — baby likes you.” 

“ Not so well as he likes Outhbert Ramsay,” retorted Theo- 
dore, with almost involuntary bitterness. 

This time Juanita’s blush was an obvious fact. 

She walked away from her cousin indignantly. 

“ You may go or stay, as you please,” she said; and he 
stayed, stayed to be a footstool under her feet if she liked; 
stayed with a heart gnawed by jealousy, consumed by despair. 

“It is useless; hopeless beyond the common measure of 
hopelessness,” he told himself. “ She never cared for me in 
the past, and she will never care for me in the future. ^ I am 
doomed to stand forever upon the same dull plane of affec- 
tionate indifference. If 1 were dangerously ill she would nurse 
me; if I were in difficulties she would load me with benefits; 
if I were dead she would be sorry for me; but she is fonder of 
Ramsay, whom she has seen half a dozen times in her life, 
than she will ever be of me.” 

Lord Oheriton returned to Dorsetshire on the following 
afternoon. He drove from Warcham to the Priory, and had 
a long Ute-a-Ute with Theodore in the garden before dinner. 


m 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


“ You have acted for my daughter throughout this misera- 
ble business/^ he said, when he had told all that was to be told 
concerning Mrs. Porter^’s seclusion at Cheshunt. “ She has 
confided in you more completely than in me — her father — and 
I leave my cause in your hands. You must plead to the 
daughter for the erring father, whose sin has exercised a fatal 
infiuence upon her life. Win her forgiveness for me — win her 
pity for that most unhappy woman, if you can. It is a diffi- 
cult task which 1 intrust to you, Theodore, but 1 believe in 
your power to move that generous heart to mercy. '' 

“ You may believe in my devotion to you both,"’"’ said Theo- 
dore, and Lord Cheriton left the Priory without seeing his wife 
or his daughter, who had gone to dress for dinner just before 
his arrival, and who came to the drawing-room presently, ex- 
pecting to find him there. 

Theodore explained his hasty departure as best he might. 

“ Your father drove over to speak to me upon a matter of 
business,^^ he said. “ He was tired after his journey, and pre- 
ferred going home to dine. 

“ He was not ill, I hope?^’ cried Lady Cheriton, with a look 
of alarm. 

“ No, there is nothing amiss with him, except fatigue. 

Juanita looked at him intently, eager to question him, but 
the butler^s entrance to announce dinner stopped her, and she 
told Theodore to give his arm to her mother, and followed 
them both to the dining-room. 

The meal was a mockery as far as two out of the three were 
concerned. Juanita was nervous and ill at ease, impatient of 
the lengthy ceremonial. Theodore eat hardly anything, but 
kept up a slipshod conversation with Lady Cheriton, talked 
about the grandchild^s abnormal intelligence, and assured her 
in reply to her reiterated inquiries that her husband was not 
ill, was not even looking ill, and that there was no reason for 
her to go back to the chase that night, as she was disposed 
to do. 

J uanita rose abruptly before the grapes and peaches had 
been taken round. 

“ Would you mind coming to my room at once, Theodore?’^ 
she said; “ 1 want half an hour's talk with you about — busi- 
ness. You will excuse my leaving you, won't you, motlier?" 

My dear child, I shall be glad to get half an hour in the 
nursery. Boyle tells me that little rascal is never so lively as 
just before he settles down for the night." 

Lady Cheriton went off in one direction, Juanita and Theo- 
dore in the other. € •’ v 




THE BAY WILL OOHE. 


403 


The lamp was lighted in the study, on the table where rows 
of books told of the widow^s studious solitude. 

Theodore glanced at the titles of these neatly arranged vol- 
umes and saw that they were mostly upon scientific subjects. 

“ 1 did not know that you were fond of science, Juanita/^ 
hesaid. 

“ I am not. I used to hate it. I am as ignorant as a baby. 
I don’t believe I know any more about the moon than Juliet 
did when she accused it of inconstancy. Only when one comes 
to my age one ought to improve one’s self. Godfrey will be 
asking me questions before I am much older, and when he 
wants to know whether the earth goes round the sun or the 
sun round the earth, I must be prepared to answer him.” 

She spoke rapidly, nervously, facing him in the soft clear 
lamp-light, with her hand upon the row of books, her eyes eager 
and questioning. 

“You have seen my father, Theodore. Is the embargo re- 
moved?” 

“It is.” 

“ And you know who murdered my husband?” 

“ So far as the assassin’s own confession is to be believed, 
yes.” 

“ He has confessed — he is in prison— he will be hanged!” 
she cried, breathlessly. 

“ The murderer has confessed, but is not in prison, and will 
not be hanged — at least I trust not, in God’s mercy. ” 

“ You are full of pity for a murderer, Theodore,” she cried, 
bitterly. “ Have you no pity for my husband? Is his death 
to go unpunished? Is his life^ — the life that might have been 
as long as it was happy — is that to count for nothing?” 

“ It is to count for much, Juanita. Believe me, your hus- 
band is avenged. His death was a sacrifice to a broken heart 
and a disordered brain. The hand that killed him is the hand 
of one who can not be called to account— the hand of a mad 
woman. ” 

“ A woman!” 

“Yes, a woman. The woman you have seen many a time 
as you passed in and out of Cheriton Chase in your father’s 
carriage by the west gate. ” 

“ Mrs. Porter?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Great God! why did she kill my husband?” 

“ Because she was unhappy — because she had suffered until 
sorrow had obscured her intellect, till her life had become one 
long thirst to do evil— one hatred of youth and beauty, and 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


404 

innocent gladness like yours. She saw you in your wedded 
happiness, and she thought of a happiness which was once her 
own day-dream — the hope and dream of patient, self-denying 
years. She struck at you through your husband. She struck 
at your father through you. 

“ My father! What was he to her, ever, except a friend 
and benefactor?^^ 

“ He was once more than that to Evelyn Strangway. 

“ Strang way shrieked Juanita, clasping her hands. “Did 
I not tell you so from the first? It was the footstep of a 
Strangway that crept past our window, while we sat together 
in our happiness, without thought or fear of peril. It was a 
Strangway who killed my husband. You told me that they 
were all dead and gone, that the race was extinct, that the 
people I feared were phantoms. I told you it was a Strangway 
who fired that shot, and you see my instinct was truer than 
your reason; and there was a Strangway at our gates — dis- 
guised, under a false name, looking at us with smooth hypo- 
critical smiles, hoarding up the venom of her wrath. 

“ Unhappily your instinct hit upon the fatal truth. The 
hatred of the Strangways was not dead. One member of that 
family survived, and cherished a more than common malignity 
against the race that had blotted out the old name.'’^ 

^ “ But my father, how had he provoked her hatred.^^’ 

‘ ‘ He had once loved her, J uanita — many years ago — before 
he had ever seen your mother^s face. Evelyn Strangway and 
he had been lovers — pledged to each other by a solemn 
promise. As a man of honor he should have kept that promise ; 
there were stringent reasons that bound him. But he saw 
your mother and loved her, and broke with Evelyn Straugway 
— openly, with no unmanly deceit; but still there was the 
broken promise, and that involved a deep wrong. He believed 
that wrong forgiven. He believed the more in her pardon be- 
cause it was her earnest desire to live unrecognized and un- 
noticed upon the estate where she was born. He could not 
fathom the depth of hatred in that warped nature. He did 
all that there was left to him to do — having taken his own 
course and entered upon a new and fairer life with the woman 
he loved — to make amends to the woman he had deserted. He 
never suspected the depth of her feelings — he never suspected 
the seeds of madness, with its ever-present dangers. He did 
what in him lay to atone for the sin of his youth; but that sin 
found him out, Juanita, and it was his bitter lot to see his be- 
loved daughter the innocent victim of his wrong-doing. He 
trusted me to tell you this, Juanita. He humbles himself in 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


405 


the dust before you, stricken at the thought of your suffering. 
He appeals through me to your love and to your pity. How 
am 1 to answer him when 1 answer for you?^^ 

She was silent for some moments after he had asked this 
final question, her eyes fixed, her chest heaving with the stormy 
beating of her heart. 

“ What has become of this woman — this pitiless devil she 
gasped. 

“ She is in a mad-house.’’^ 

“ Is no punishment to overtake her? . Is she not to be tried 
for her life? Let them prove her mad, or let them find her 
guilty, and hang her — hang her — hang her! Her life for his, 
her worn-out remnant of wretched, disappointed days for his 
bright young life, with all its promise and all its hope!^^ 

‘‘ It would He a poor revenge, Juanita, to fake so poor a 
life. This unhappy woman is under restraint that will, in all 
probability, last till the day of her death. Her crime is known 
only to your father and to me. Were it become known to 
others she would have to stand in the dock, and then the 
whole story would have to be told — the stoiy of your father^s 
broken promise, of this woman ^s youth, bound so closely with 
his that to many it would seem almost as if they stood side by 
side at the bar. Do you think that the fierce rapture of re- 
venge could ever atone to you for having^ brought that shame 
upon your father’s declining years, Juanita?” 

“ And my husband’s death is to go unavenged?” 

“ Do you think there is no retribution in the slow agony of 
a shattered mind — the long blank days of old age in a lunatic 
asylum, the apathy of a half-extinguished intellect varied by 
flashes of bitter memory? God help and pity such a criminal, 
for her punishment must be heavier than hemp and quick- 
lime.” 

She seemed scarcely to hear him. She was walking up and 
down the room, her hands clinched, her brows contracted over 
the fixed eyes. 

“ I caught just one glimpse of her as we drove past; but 
that glimpse ought to have been enough,” she said. ‘‘ 1 can 
see her face as we pass the lodge, looking out at us from the 
parlor window, within a few hours of my darling’s death — a 
pale, vindictive, face — yes, vindictive. I ought to have under- 
stood; I ought to have taken warning, and guarded my be- 
loved one from her murderous hate.” 

What am I to say to your father, Juanita? I ought not 
to leave him long in doubt. Think what it is for a father to 


406 


THE DAT WILL COME. 


humiliate himself before his .daughter — to sue for forgive- 
ness. 

“ Oh, but he must not do that. E have nothing to forgive. 
How could he think that there could be such diabolical 
malignity in any human breast? How could he think that the 
Wrong done by him would be revenged upon that innocent 
head? Oh, if she had gone a nearer way to revenge herself^ 
if she had killed me, rather than him! It is such bitterness 
to know that my love brought him untimely death — that he 
might have been here now, happy, with long years of honor 
and content before him if he had chosen any other wife. 

“It is hopeless to think of what might have been, Hita. 
Your husband was happy in your love, and not unhappy in 
his death. Such a fate is far better than the dull and slow 
decay' which closes many a fortunate life — the inch by inch 
dissolution of a protracted old age, the gradual extinction of 
mind and feeling, the apathetic end. You must not talk as if 
your husband’s death was the extremity of misfortune.” 

“ It was — for me. Can I forget what it was to lose him? 
Oh,' there is no use in talking of my loss. I wanted to avenge 
his death. I have lived for that, and I am cheated of even 
that poor comfort.” 

“ V\"hat shall I say to your father?” 

“ Say that I will do nothing to injure him, or to distress my 
mother. I will remember that I am their daughter, as well 
as Godfrey’s widow. Good-night, Theodore. You have done 
your uttermost to help me. We can not help it, either of us, 
if fate wa^ against us. ’ ’ 

She gave him her hand, very cold, but with the firm grasp 
of friendship. The very touch of that hand told him he would 
never be more to her than a friend. Not so is a woman’s 
hand given when the impassioned heart goes with it. 

CHAPTEE XXXV. 

“ A malady 

Preys on my heart that medicine can not reach, 

Invisible and cureless. ” 

Mbs. Pokter’s evanishment created considerable talk in the 
little village of Oheriton, and would doubtless have been the 
occasion of still greater wonder but for the impenetrable 
stupidity of the young maid-servant, from whom no detailed 
account of her mistress’s departure could be extorted. Had 
the girl Phoebe been observant and loquacious she might have 
stimulated public curiosity by a lively narrative of events; set- 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


407 


tiug forth Theodore Dalbrook^s emotion at finding the lodge 
deserted; and how he had sent up to the house for his lord- 
ship; and how his lordship and Mr. Dalbrook had remained in 
earnest conversation for nearly an hour in the lodge parlor; 
and how Mrs. Porter had left a mahogany box upon the table, 
a flat mahogany box with brass corners, which Phoebe had 
never seen before; and how this very box had disappeared mys- 
teriously when the two gentlemen left. All this would have 
afforded mental pabulum for the acuter wits of the village, 
and would have formed the nucleus of an interesting scandal, 
to be uttered with bated breath over the humble tea-tray, and 
to give zest to the unassuming muffin in the back parlors of 
small rustic shop-keepers.’ As it was, thanks to Phoebe^s ad- 
mirable stolidity, all that was known of Mrs. Porter’s depart- 
ure was that she had gone to London by the early train on a 
certain morning, and that her luggage had been sent after her, 
address unknown. 

It was the general opinion that Mrs. Porter had had money 
left her, atid that she had reassumed her position in life as a 
genteel personage. This afforded some scope for speculative 
gossip, but not for a wide range of conjecture, and in less than 
a month after Mrs. Porter’s departure the only talk in relation 
to the west lodge was the talk of who would succeed the 
vanished lady as its occupant. This thrilling question was 
promptly settled by the removal of the head-gardener and his 
wife from their very commonplace abode in the village to' the 
old English cottage. 

Oheriton was furnished with a more interesting topic of dis- 
course before the end of October, when it was “ given out ” 
that Lord and Lady Oheriton were going to winter abroad, an 
announcement which struck consternation to a village in which 
the great house was the center of light and leading, and the 
chief consumer of butcher’s meat, farm produce — over and 
above the supply from the home-farm — and expensive groceries; 
not to mention hardware, kitchen crockery, coals, saddlery, 
forage, and odds and ends of all kinds. To shut up Oheriton 
Chase for six months was to paralyze trade in Oheriton. 

To draw down the blinds and close the shutters of the great 
house was to spread a gloom over the best society in the neigh- 
borhood, and to curtail the weekly offertory by about one 
third. . 

Everybody admitted, however, that his lordship had been 
looking very ill of late. lie had aged suddenly, ‘‘as those 
fine, well-set-up men are apt to do,” said Mr. Bogle, the doc- 
tor. He looked care-worn and haggard. The village solicitor 


408 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


hoped that he had not been dabbliog with foreign loans, or 
had invested blindly in the fortune of an impossible canal, yet 
opined that nothing but the Stock Exchange could make such 
a sudden change for the worse in any man. Mr. Bogle de- 
clared that Lord Cheriton’s lungs were as sound as a bell, and 
that if he were ordered abroad it was not on account of his 
chest. 

Ever3^body pitied her ladyship, and talked of her as despoiid- 
ingly as if it had been proposed to take her to Botany Bay in 
the days of transportation for felony. It was so cruel to sepa- 
rate her from her flower gardens, her hot-houses, her aviary, 
and her daughter; for all which things a correct British ma- 
tron was supposed to exist. To take her from these placid 
domestic pleasures, from these strictly lady-like interests, and 
to plunge her in a hot-bed of vice such as Monte Carlo, as 
pictured by the rustic mind, would be a kind of moral mur- 
der. Cheriton recovered its equanimity somewhat upon hear- 
ing that his lordship was going to winter at Mustapba Superi- 
eure; but it was opined that even there* baccarat and Parisian 
morals would be in the ascendant, and a photograph of a 
square in Algiers, which looked like a bit broken off the Rue 
de Rivoli, was by no means reassuring. 

Yet, whatever Dr. Bogle might say as to the soundness of 
his lungs, there remained the fact that his lordship had altered 
for the worse since the shooting season began. He who used 
to go out daily with the guns had this year not gone with them 
half a dozen times in the whole season. He whose active 
habits and personal superintendence of his estate had been 
the admiration of his neighbors had taken to staying at home, 
dreg,ming over his Delphin, Horace, or Juvenal in the library. 

Yes, Lord Cheriton was a broken man. From the hour in 
which his daughter had laid her head upon his breast, and 
sobbed out her fond words of com passion and forgiveness for 
the weakness and the sin that had brought about her one great 
sorrow; from that hour James Dalbrook’s zest of life dwindled, 
and the things that he had cared for pleased him no more. 
His heart sickened as he rode his cob by the familiar lanes, 
and surveyed wide-spreading corn-flelds and undulating past- 
ures — sickened at the thought of that wretched creature whose 
dream he had darkened, whose long-cherished hope he had 
ruthlessly disappointed. The image of Evelyn Darcy, eating 
out her heart in the dull monotony of a private mad-house, 
came between him and that sunlit prospect, haunted and tort- 
ured him wherever he turned his eye. He had to give up the 
quiet morning rides which had once been the most restful 


THE HAY WILL COME. 400 

portion of the day, his thinking hours, his time for leisurely 
discursive meditations, for indulgence in happy thoughts and 
humorous reverie. 

His wife saw the change in him, knowing nothing of the 
cause, and urged him to take advice. He gratified her by see- 
ing Sir William Jenner, confessed to being fagged and out of 
spirits, and obtained just the advice he wanted— complete 
change of scene — a winter in Egypt or Algiers. 

“ We’ll try Algiers first, and if we don’t like it w^e can try 
the Nile,” he said; and his wife, who would have gone to Van- 
couver Island, or Patagonia, just as cheerfully, forthwith 
ordered her trunks to be packed, and began to take leave of 
her grandson — an operation which would require weeks. 

They left England in the middle of November, just when 
the last leaves were being stripped from the oaks and beeches 
by the blustering south-west wind, which is a specialty iji that 
part of the country, where it comes salt with the bitter breath 
of the sea, and sometimes thick and gray with sea-fog. 

Mrs. Porter had been nearly three months at "Oheshunt 
Grange, and Theodore had been three times to see her in that 
carefully chosen retreat, and on two of those visits had met 
her daughter Mercy, who went to her twice a week. 

He had found Dr. Davidson’s patient strangely calm and 
tractable, professing herself contented with her life, and hav- 
ing established her reputation among the other patients as a 
lady of blameless character and manners. 

“ I sometimes woiider how they would feel if they knew 
what I did that night,” she said to Theodore once, with a 
sinister smile. “ They think me a commonplace person. 
They call my complaint nervous debility. Nobody here would 
believe me if I were to tell them that I murdered a man who 
never offended me by so much as an uncivil word. They don’t 
believe that such a deed as that would be possible in our day 
and in our country. They think it was only a couple of cent- 
uries ago in Southern Europe that women knew the meaning 
of revenge.” 

This was the solitary occasion on which she spoke of her 
crime. On the other visits he found her apathetic. Although 
she was elaborately polite, it was evident that she did not 
recognize him. She had, however, recognized her daughter, 
and now received her with some faint show of tenderness, bnt 
not without a touch of fretful impatience. It was evident 
that Mercy’s presence gave her no pleasure. 

“1 go to see her as often as Doctor Davidson allows me,” 


410 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


Mercy told Theodore, as they walked to the station together. 
“ It is all I can do, and it is very little.-’^ 

“ Have you thought any more of Lord Oheriton^s earnest 
desire to improve your position? Have you learned to take 
pity upon him, to think more kindly of him on account of all 
he has suffered ?^^ 

“ I am very sorry for him, hut 1 can never accept any favor 
at his hands. 1 can never forget what my mother’s life has 
been like, and who made her what she is. ” 

‘‘ And is your own life to be always the same, a monotony 
of toil?” 

“ I am used to such a life; but 1 have some thought of a 
change in my employment. I had some talk with your friend 
Mr. Kamsay, last night at Miss Newton’s, and through his 
help I hope to learn to be a sick-nurse. 1 should be of more 
use to my fellow-creatures in that capacity than in stitching at 
fine needle-work for rich people’s children. ” 

“It would be a hard life, Mercy.” 

“lam content to live a hard life. I had my span of a soft 
life, a life of idleness on a summer sea, amid the loveliest spots 
upon earth; a life that would have been like a glimpse of 
heaven itself' if it had not been for the consciousness of sin and 
disgrace. I)o you think I forget those days on the Mediter- 
ranean, or forget that I have to atone for them? The man I 
loved is dead; all that belonged to that life has vanished like a 
dream.” 

They parted at the railway station, she to go to her place in 
a dusty third-class carriage, he to a smoking-carriage to smoke 
the meditative pipe, and think sadly of those two blighted lives 
•which had been ground beneath the wheels of Lord Oheriton’s 
triumphal car. 

Cheriton Chase was deserted, the blinds down, the servants 
on board-wages, the flower-beds empty and raked over for the 
winter; but at Milbrook Priory all was life and movement. 
The sisters and their husbands were again established in their 
favorite rooms. Lady Jane was again at hand to assist her 
daughter-in-law to bear the burden of a family party, and all 
was much as it had been in the previous winter, except that 
Juanita had a new interest in life, and was able to take pleas- 
ure in many things that had been an oppression to her spirits 
last year. 

Most of all were her feelings altered toward Mrs. Grenville 
and her nursery. She was now warmly interested in the 
history of Johnnie’s measles, and deeply sympathetic about 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


411 


that constitutional tendency toward swollen tonsils which was 
dear little Lucy^s “ weak point. For must not her Godfrey 
inevitably face the ordeal of measles, and might not his tonsils 
show a like weakness at the growing age? All those discus- 
sions about nursery dinners, the children who fed well and the 
children who fed badly, those who liked milk-puddings and 
those who could not be induced to touch them, the advisability 
of a basin of corn-flour or bread and milk at bed -time, the 
murderous influence of buns and pastry, and the lurking 
dangers of innocent-seeming jam — all these things, to hear of 
which last year would have bored her almost to exasperation, 
were now vital and spirit-moving questions. 

The little visitors’ nurseries were near the infant Sir God- 
frey’s rooms; and it was a delight to And the baby taking 
pleasure in his youthful cousin’s society, and reveling in their 
noise. His own young lungs revealed their power and scope 
as they had never done before, and led the infant orchestra. 
Juanita spent hours in this noisy society, sitting on the floor 
to be crawied over by her son, who was just beginning to dis- 
cover the possibility of independent locomotion, and to have 
her hair pulled affectionately by the younger Grenvilles, who 
found her the most accommodating playfellow. She insisted 
that the children should dine at the family luncheon-table, 
much to the gratification of their mother and grandmother, 
and to tire exasperation of Mrs. Morningside, who, being 
childless herself, did not see why her midday meal should be 
made intolerable by the boisterous egotism of her nephews 
and nieces. 

This was the condition of things at Christmas when Theo- 
dore reappeared at the Priory, having come to Dorchester for 
his holidays, after three mpnths’ earnest work. He had been 
reading with a man of some distinction at the Chancery Bar, 
and he had been writing for one of the law journals. He was 
struck by the change in his -cousin. She looked younger, 
brighter, and happier than she had ever looked since her hus- 
band’s death. No one could accuse her of having forgotten 
him, of having grown indifferent to his memory, for at the 
least allusion which recalled his image her expression clouded 
and her eyes grew sad. But there could be no doubt that the 
dawn of a happier existence was beginning to disperse the 
darkness of her night of grief. The influence of her child had 
done much; the solution of the n^stery of her husband’s death 
had done more to relieve her mind of its burden. She was no 
longer tortured by wonder; her thoughts were no longer forced 
to travel perpetually along the same groove. She knew the 


412 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


worst, and pity for her father prompted her to try to forget 
the wretch who had blighted her young life. 

She received Theodore with all her old kindness, with that 
easy cordiality which was of all indications the most hopeless 
to the man who loved her. She took him to the nurseries, 
where Christmas fires blazed merrily, and Christmas gifts 
strewed the carpet, a plethora of toys, a litter of foil-paper, 
and gold and silver fringe, and tissue-paper cocked hats and 
Pierrot caps, from the wreck of cracker bonbons. The chil- 
dren were masters of the situation in this Christmas week. 

It is their season,^^ said Juanita, tenderly. “I don’t 
think we can ever do too much to make our children happy at 
this time, remembering that He who made the season sacred 
was once a little child. ” 

She took her baby up in her arms as she spoke, and pressed 
the little face lovingly against her own. 

“ Why does Mr. Ramsay never come to see me?” she asked, 
with a sudden lightness of tone; “ he used to be so fond of 
baby.” 

“ He is working hard at the hospital. ” 

“ And is he not to have any holiday with you?” 

“I fear not.” 

Her manner in making the inquiry, light as it was, told him 
so much ; and he noticed how she bent her face over the child’s 
fiaxeri head as she talked of Ramsay. 

“ Why does he work so hard?” she asked, after a silence. 

“ He has never given me any reason, yet 1 have my own 
idea about his motive.” 

‘‘ And what is your idea?” 

Have you ever heard of a man trying to live down a hope- 
less attachment— trying to medicine a mind diseased with the 
strong physic of intellectual labor? That is my case, Juanita; 
and I am inclined to think that it may be Ramsay’s^ case too. 
lie has altered curiously within the last few months. I can 
not get so near his inner self as I used to get; but I know him 
well enough to form a shrewd opinion.” 

“lam sorry for you both,” she said, with a little nervous 
laugh, still hiding her face against the baby’s incipient curls 
and wrinkled pink skin. “lam sorry you should be so senti- 
mental.” 

“ Sentimental, Nita! Is it sentimental to cherish one love 
for the best part of a life-time, knowing that love to be hope- 
:5ess all the time? If tl^t is your idea of sentimentality, 1 
confess myself sentimental. 1 have loved you ever since I 
knew the meaning of the word love— and I have gone on 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


413 


loving you in spite of every discouragement. I loved you 
when your love was given to another. . Yes, I stood aside .and 
harbored not one malevolent thought against the man you had 
so blessed and honored. I have loved you in your sorrow, as 1 
loved you years ago in your light-hearted girlhood. I shall 
love you till lam dust; but I know that my love is hopeless. 
•Your very kindness — in its level uniformity of sweetness — has 
told me that.^’ 

‘ ‘ Dear Theodore, if you knew how 1 value you — how I ad- 
mire and respect you — I think you would be content to accept 
my sisterly regard, she said, looking up at him with tearful 
eyes. “ Perhaps had we met differently, as strangers, I might 
hav^e felt differently; but from my earliest remembrance you 
have been to me as a friend and brother. I can not teach 
myself any other love.^^ 

‘‘ Ah, Nita, that other love comes untaught. You want no 
teaching to love Cuthbert Ramsay. DonT be angry. 1 canT 
help speaking of that which has been in my mind so long. I 
saw my doom in your face when Cuthbert was here. 1 saw 
that he could interest you as I had never interested you. 1 
saw that he brought fresh thoughts and fancies into your life. 
I saw thakhe could conquer wliere 1 was beaten. 

‘‘You have no right to say that.'’^ 

“ 1 have the right that goes with conviction, Juanita, and 
with disinterested love. I have the right of my loyal friend- 
ship for the man who has shown himself loyal to me. Unless 
you or I make some sign to prevent him, Cuthbert Ramsay 
will have made himself an exile from this country before the 
new year is a month old. 

“ VYhat do you mean, Theodore?^^ 

“ I mean that he is in treaty with the chief of a scientific 
expedition to the Antarctic Ocean. The ships will be away 
three years, and if he join that expedition as doctor he will be 
absent for that time, with the usual hazards of being absent 
forever. 

“ Why is he going 

“ He has never given me any reason, but I suspect that the 
reason is — you.” 

“ Theodore!” 

“ If 1 read his secret right, he left this place deeply in love 
v/ith you. He knew I loved you, and that was one reason for 
a man of his generous temper to withdraw. You are rich and 
he is poor, that makes another reason. He is too honorable to 
come between his friend and his friend's love. He is too proud 
to offer himself with only his talents and his unfilled ambition 


414 


THE DAY WILL COME. 


to a woman of fortune. So he takes his old mistress Science 
for his comforter, and is going to the other side of the world 
to watch the planets in the polar skies, and to keep the crews 
free of fever and scurvy, if he can.'’^ 

“ Three years, faltered Juanita. “ It would not be so 
very long anywhere else; but those polar expeditions so often 
end in death. 

‘‘ Shall I tell him not to go?^^ 

“ Pray do.^’ 

“ l"m afraid I shall hardly prevail with him, unless — 

“ Unless what?’"’ 

‘‘ Unless you will let me say that you wish him to stay."’^ 

She blushed deepest crimson, and again had recourse to the 
baby’s pink little head as a hiding-place for her confusion. 

“ Tell him anything you like; ask him to come and romp 
with the children next Easter. He is fond of children, and 1 
am sure he would like my nephews and nieces. Ah, Theo- 
dore,” she cried, holding out her hand, “ now you are indeed 
my brother. Forget that you ever wished to be more, and let 
me hear of your having found a new love by and by. ” 

“ By and by is easily said; Juanita.” 

What would that by and by have revealed could the curtain 
of the Future have been lifted that Christmas-eve, as the 
children danced in the shadowy room, while their elders sat 
beside the fire in the winter dusk? A coffin brought by land 
and sea, and laid with stately ceremonial in a grave in Cheritoii 
church-yard. A respectful obituary notice of Lord Cheriton, 
with a brief biography, setting forth his remarkable gifts and 
his honorable career; much wonderment among his lordship’s 
friends at the too early termination of that prosperous life — a 
man of sixty who had looked ten years younger, and whose 
vigorous constitution and grand bearing had denoted one of 
the semi-immortals — a Brougham, a Lyndhurst, or a St. Leon- 
ards. 

What else? A lovely Spanish-looking matron, proud of her 
handsome Scotch husband and his scientific successes, reigning 
over one of the most delightful houses in London, a house in 
which -the brightest lights of the intellectual world were to be 
found shining in a congenial atmosphere. Sir Godfrey Car- 
michael’s widow, now Cuthbert Bamsay’s wife, and one of the 
leaders in all movements that tend toward the welfare and en- 
lightenment of mankind. 

What else? A rising barrister, living quietly in a secluded 
old house ut Chiswick, with a sweety serious-looking wife and 


THE HAY WILL COME. 


415 


two lovely babies, supremely contented with his lot and with 
his home, which is managed for him with that perfection of 
art which conceals all artifice. His wife and he are of exactly 
the same age, have the same deep love of good books, good 
pictures, and good music, and the same indifference to frivo- 
lous pleasure and fashionable amusements. They have a few 
friends, carefully chosen, and of choicest quality, and among 
the most honored of these is Sarah Newton, still brisk and 
active, though her abundant hair is snow-white, and there are 
the deep lihes of age about her shrewd and kindly eyes. They 
have their garden with its old cedars, and old wall shutting oil 
the world of gig-and -villa respectability. They have their 
boat-house and boats, in which they live for the most part on 
summer evenings, and they have hardly anything left to wish 
for — except a lock. " 

The barrister is Theodore Dalbrook, and his wife^s name is 
Mercy. 

He found her four years ago established as nurse at Ohes- 
hunt Grange, administering to her mother till the day of her 
death, which happened by a strange fatality within a few hours 
of that other death in Algiers, a sudden death by cerebral 
apoplexy, swift as a thunder-clap. He found her there, and 
saw her frequently in his duty visits to the asylum— visits 
paid in performance of a promise to his unhappy kinsman. A 
little by little that sympathy which he had felt for her in the 
first hour of their acquaintance warmed and ripened into love, 
and in Mercy, the woman who had sinned and paid the bitter 
penalty of sin, he found the consoling angel of his disappointed 
youth. 

The world knows nothing of her story. That dead past is 
buried deeper than ever ship went down into the treacherous 
waters of the tideless sea. To Mercy herself, in her plenitude 
of domestic bliss, it seems as if it was another woman who 
shed those bitter tears and drank that cup of shame. The 
world knows only that Theodore Dalbrook has a lovely and 
devoted wife, who thoroughly understands and realizes the 
duties of her position. 

Lord Cheriton^s final will, executed three months before his 
death at Mustapha Superieure, made no mention of his 
daughter Mercy, but bequeathed a life interest in the sum of' 
£20,000 consols to Sarah Newton, spinster, the principal to 
go to Mercy Darcy — otherwise Mercy Porter — upon that lady's 
death. 


THE EHD. 

. > X 


ADYEKTISEMEKTS. 


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WITH P£ARLINE delicate w^oman can do a 
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504 My Poor Wife 10 

1046 Jessie 20 


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346 A Fatal Dower 20 

372 Phyllis’ Probation 10 

461 His Wedded Wife.... 20 

829 The Actor’s Ward 20 

Works by the author of “ A Great 
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588 Cherry 10 

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794 Beaton’s Bargain — . . 20 

797 Look Before You Leap 20 

805 The Freres. 1st half ...... 20 

805 Tile Freres. 2d half 20 

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806 Her Dearest Foe. 2d half.... 20 

814 The Heritage of Langdale — 20 

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900 By Woman’s Wit 20 

997 Forging the Fetters, and The 

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1057 A Life Interest 90 

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503 The Tinted Venus. A Farcical 

Romance 10 

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95 The Fire Brigade. 16 

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772 Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood 

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787 Court Royal 20 

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140 A Glorious Fortune 10 

146 Love Finds the Way, and Other 
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230 Oorotliy Forster 20 

324 Iti Luck at Last 10 

54! Uncle Jack 10 

651 “ Self or Bearer ” 10 

Children of Gibeon 20 

901 The Holy Rose 10 

906 'j'he World Went Very Well 

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980 To Call Her Mine 20 

1055 Katharine Regina 20 

1065 Herr Paulus: His Rise, His 

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1143 The Inner House. 20 

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579 The Flower of Doom,and Other 

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1023 Next of Kin— Wanted 20 

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18 Sbandon Bells 20 

21 Sunrise : A Story of These 

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23 A Princess of Thule 20 

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44 Macleod of Dare 20 

49 That Beautiful Wretch 20 

50 The Strange Adventures of a 

Phaeton 20 

70 White Wings: A Yachting Ro- 
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78 Madcap Violet 20 

81 A Daughter of Heth 20 

134 Three Feathers ^ 

125 The Monarch of Mincing Lane 80 

126 KUineuy... 20 


138 Green Pastures and Piccadilly 20 
205 Judith Shakespeare : Her Love 
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627 White Heather 26' 

898 Romeo and J uliet: A Tale of 

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962 Sabina Zembra. 2d half 

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1132 In Far Lochaber 

li. D. Blackmore’s Works, 

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67 Lorna Doone. 2d half 

427 The Remarkable History of Sir 
Thomas Upmore, Bart., M. P. 

615 Mary Anerley 

625 Erema; or. My Father’s Sin. . 

629 Ciipps, the Carrier 

630 Ci’adock Nowell. 1st half 

630 Cradock Nowell. 2d half 

631 Christowell. A Dartmoor Tale 

632 ( lara Vaughan 

633 The Maid of Sker. 1st half... 

633 The Maid of Sker. 2d half. . . . 

636 Alice Lorraine. 1st half 

636 Alice Lorraine. 2d half 

926 Springhaven. 1st half 

926 Springhaven. 2d half. ........ 

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35 Lady Audley’s Secret. 

.56 Phantom Fortune.. 

74 Aurora Floyd... 

110 Under the Red Flag. 

153 The Golden Calf 

204 Vixen 

211 The Octoroon 

234 Barbara; or. Splendid Misery. 

263 An Ishmaelite 

315 Tile Mistletoe Bough. Christ- 
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E. Braddon 

434 Wy Hand's Weird 

478 Diavoia; or, Nobodi^’s Daugh- 
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475 Diavoia; or. Nobody’s Daugh- 
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480 Married in Haste. Edited by 
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487 Put to the Test. Edited liy Miss 

M. E. Bi-adtlon 

488 .Toshua Haggard’s Daughter... 

489 Rupert Godwin 

495 Mount Royal. 

496 Only a Woman. Edited by Miss 

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497 The Lady’s Mile 

498 Only a Olod 

499 The Cloven Foot 

511 A Strange World 

515 Sir Jasper’s Tenant 

524 Strangers and Pilgrims. 

529 Tlie Doctors Wife 

542 Fenton’s Quest 

544 Cut by the County ; or, Grace 

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548 J’he Fatal Marriage, aud The 

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549 Dudley Carleon ; or. The Broth- 

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552 Hostages to Fortune 30 

553 Birds of Prey 20 

554 Charlotte’s Inheritance. (Se- 

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557 To the Bitter End 20 

559 Taken at the Flood 20 

5(50 Asphodel . 20 

561 Just as I am ; or, A Living Lie 20 

567 Dead Men’s Shoes 30 

570 John Marchmont’s Legacy 20 

618 The Mistletoe Bough. Christ- 
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E. Braddou 20 

840 One Thing Needful; or; The 

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881 Mohawks. 1st half 20 

881 Mohawks. 2d half 20 

890 The Mistletoe Bough. Christ- 
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943 Weavers and Weft; or, “ Love 

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947 Publicans and Sinners; or, 

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947 Publicans and Sinners; or, 

Lucius Davoren. 2d half 20 

1036 Like and Unlike 20 

1098 The Fatal Three 20 

WorlcS'by Charlotte M. Braeme» 
Author of “Dora Thorne.” 

19 Her Mother’s Sin 10 

51 Dora Thorne 20 

54 A Broken Wedding-Ring 20 

68 A Queen Amongst Women 10 

69 Madolin’s Lover 20 

73 Redeemed by Love; or, Love's 

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76 Wife in Name Only; or, A 

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79 Wedded and Parted 10 

92 Lord Lynne’s Choice 10 

148 Thorns and Orange-Blossoms. 10 

190 Romance of a Black Veil 10 

230 Which Loved Him Best? 10 

237 Repented at Leisure. (Large 

type edition) 20 

967 Repented at Leisure 10 

^49 “ Prince Charlie’s Daughter;” 

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250 Sunshine and Roses; or, Di- 
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254 The Wife’s Secret, and Fair 

but False 10 

283 The Sin of a Lifetime ; or, Viv- 
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287 At War With Herself 10 

928 At War With Herself. (Large 

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2^ From Gloom to Sunlight; or, 

From Out the Gloom 10 

955 From Gloom to Sunlight; or. 
From Out the Gloom. (Large 
type edition) 30 


291 Love’s Warfare ... 10 

292 A Golden Heart 10 

293 The Shadow of a Sin 10 

948 The Shadow of a Sin. (Large 

type edition) 20 

294 Lady Hutton’s Wafd 10 

294 Hilda; or. The False Vow 10 

928 Lady Hutton’s Ward 30 

928 Hilda; or. The False Vow. 

(Large type edition) 26 

295 A Woman’s War 10^ 

952 A Woman’s War. (Large type 

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296 A Rose in Thorns 10 

297 Hilary’s Folly; or. Her Mar- 
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953 Hilary’s Folly; or, Her Mar- 

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299 The Fatal Lilies, and A Bride 

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303 Ingledew House, and More Bit- 

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304 In Cupid’s Net. 10 

305 A Dead Heart, and Lady Gwen- 

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306 A Golden Dawn, and Love for 

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307 Two Kisses, and Like no Other 

Love 10 

308 Beyond Pardon 20 

322 A Woman’s Love-Story 10 

323 A Willful Maid 20 

411 A Bitter Atonement 20 

433 My Sister Kate 10 

459 A Woman’s Temptation. 

(Large type edition) 20 

951 A Woman’s Temptation' 10 

460 Under a Shadow 20 

465 The Earl’s Atonement 20 

466 Between Two Loves 20 

467 A Struggle for a Ring 20 

469 Lady Darner’s Secret; or, A 

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470 Evelyn’s Folly 20 

471 Thrown on the World 20 

476 Between Two Sins; or. Married 

in Haste 10 

516 Put Asunder ; or. Lady Castle- 

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576 Her Martyrdom 20 

626 A Fair Mystery 20 

741 The Heiress of Hilldrop; or, 
The Romance of a 'ioung 

Girl 20 

745 For Another’s Sin ; or, A Strug- 
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792 Set in Diamonds 20 

821 The World Between Them 20 

853 A True Magdalen 20 

854 A Woman’s Error 20 

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924 ’Twixt Smile and Tear 20 

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995 An Unnatural Bondage, and 

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1000 His Wife’s Judgment 20 

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857 Kildee; or. The Sphinx of the. 

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145 “ Storm-Beaten God and The 

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154 Annan Water 20 

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376 A Bide to Khiva 20 

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796 In a Grass Country. 20 

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912 Pure Gold. 1st half 20 

912 Pure Gold. 2d half 20 

963 Worth Winning 20 

1025 Daisy’s Dilemma 20 

1028 A Devout Lover ; or, A Wasted 

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1070 A Life’s Mistake 20 

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215 Not Like Other Girls 20 

896 Robert Ord’s Atonement 20 

551 Barbara Heathcote’s Trial. 1st 

half 20 

551 Barbara Heathcote’s Trial. 2d 

half 20 

608 For Lilias. 1st half 20 

608 For Lilias. 2d half 20 

930 Uncle Max. 1st half 20 

930 Uncle Max. 2d half 20 

932 Queenie's Whim. 1st half 20 

932 Queenie’s Whim. 2d half 20 

934 Wooed and Married. 1st half. 20 
9.34 Wooed and Married. 2d half. 20 
936 Nellie’s Memories. 1st half. . . 20 
936 Nellie’s Memories. 2d half... 20 


961 Wee Wifie. 20 

1033 Esther: A Story for Girls 20 

1064 Only the Governess 20 

1135 Aunt Diana 20 

Lewis Carroll’s Works. 

462 Alice’s Ad ventures in Wonder- 
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Tenniel 20 

789 Through the Looking-Glass, 
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Illustrated by John Tenniel. . 20 


Wilkie Collins’s Works. 


52 The New Magdalen 10 

102 The Moonstone 20 

167 Heart and Science 2C 

168 No Thoroughfare. By Dickens 

and Collins 10 

175 Love’s Random Shot, and 

Other Stories 10 

233 “ I Say No ;” or. The Love-Let- 
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508 The Girl at the Gate 10 

591 The Queen of Hearts 20 

613 The Ghost’s Touch, and Percy 

and the Prophet 10 

623 My Lady’s Money 10 

701 Tlie Woman in White. 1st half 20 

701 The Woman in White. 2d half ^ 

702 Man and Wife. Ist h^f. 20 

702 Man and Wife. MiuOf. IN 


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764 The Evil Genius 20 

896 The Guilty River 20 

946 The Dead Secret 20 

977 'J'he Haunted Hotel 20 

10!39 Armadale. 1st half 20 

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1095 The Legacy of Cain 20 

1119 No Name. 1st half 20 

W19 No Name. 2d half 20 


Mabel Collins’s Works. 

749 Lord Vanecourt’s Daughter... 20 
828 The Prettiest Woman in Warsaw 20 


Hugh Conway’s Woi*ks. 

240 Called Back 10 

251 The Daughter of the Stars, and 
Other Tales 10 

301 Dark Days 10 

302 'I’he Blatchford Bequest 10 

.502 Carriston’s Gift 10 

525 Paul Vargas, and Other Stories 10 

543 A Family Affair 20 

601 Slings and Arrows, and Other 

Stories 10 

711 A Cai’dinal Sin 20 

804 Living or Dead ^ 

830 Bound by a Spell 20 


J, Feniinore Cooper’s Works. 


60 The Last of the Mohicans 20 

63 The Spy 20 

309 The Pathfinder ^ 

310 The Prairie 20 

318 The Pioneers; or, The Sources 

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359 The Water-Witch 20 

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373 Wing and Wing 20 

378 Homeward Bound; or, The 

Chase 20 

379 Home as Found. (Sequel to 

“ Homeward Bound”) 20 

380 Wyandotte; or. The Hutted 

Knoll 20 

385 The Headsman; or. The Ab- 

baye des Vignerons 20 

394 The Bravo 20 

397 Lionel Lincoln ; or. The Leag- 
uer of Boston 20 

400 The Wept of Wish-Tou-Wish. . 20 

413 Afloat and Ashore 20 

414 Miles Wallingford. (Sequel to 

“Afloat and Ashore”) 20 

415 The Ways of the Hour. 20 

416 Jack 3’ier ; or. The Florida Reef 20 

419 The Chainbearer; or. The Lit- 

tle-])age Manuscripts 20 

420 Salanstoe; or, The Littlepage 

Manuscripts 20 

421 The Redskins; or, Indian and 

Injin. Being the conclusion 
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422 Precatxtion 20 

423 The Sea Lions, or. The Lost 

Sealers 20 

424 Mercedes of Castile; or. The 

Voyage to Cathay 20 


425 The Oak-Openings; or. The 


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431 The Monikins 20 

1062 The Deerslayer; or. The First 

War-Path. .1st half .20 

1062 The Deerslayer; or. The First 
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Marie Corelli’s Works. 

1068 Vendetta ! or. The Story of 0 ms 

Forgotten 20 

1131 Thelma,. 1st half ^ 

1131 Thelma. 2d half ^ 

Ciuorgiana M. Ci*aik’s Workw. 

450 Godfrey Helstone 20 

606 Mrs. Hollyer 20 

B. M. Croker’s Works. 

207 Pretty Miss Neville . . 20 

260 Proper Pride 10 

412 Some One Else 20 

1124 Diana Barrington 20 

May Crommelin’s Works. 

452 In the West Countrie 20 

619 Joy; or. The Light of Cold- 

Home Ford 20 

647 Goblin Gold 10 

Alphonse Daudet’s Works. 

534 Jack 20 

574 The Nabob : A Story of Parisian 
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Charles Dickens’s Works. 

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22 David Copperfield. Vol. I.... ^ 
22 David Copperfield. Vol. II... ^ 

24 Pickwick Papers. Vol. I ^ 

24 Pickwick Papers. Vol. II ^ 

37 Nicholas Nickleby. 1st halL. ^ 
37 Nicholas Nickleby. 2dhalL.. ^ 

41 Oliver Twist ^ 

77 A Tale of Two Cities ^ 

84 Hard Times 10 

91 Barnaby Rudge. 1st half. .... 20 

91 Barnabv Rudge. 2d half ^ 

94 Little Dorr it. 1st half ^ 

94 Little Dorrit. 2d half ^ 

106 Bleak House. 1st half 20 

106 Bleak House. 2d half ^ 

107 Dombey and Son. 1st half . . . ^ 

107 Dombey and Son. 2d half 20 

108 The Cricket on the Hearth, and 

Doctor Marigold 10 

131 Our Mutual Friend. 1st half. 20 

131 Our Mutual Friend. 2d half. . 20 

132 Master Humphrey’s Clock 10 

152 The Uncommercial Traveler. . 20 

168 No Thoroughfare. By Dickens 

and Collins 10 

169 The Haunted Man 10 

437 Life and Adventures of Martin 

Chuzzlewit. Ist half 20 

437 Life and Adventures of Martin 
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439 Great Expectations W 

440 Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings...... 10 

447 American Notes 20 


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448 Pictures From Italy, and The 

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676 A Child’s History of England. 

Sarah Doudney’s Works. 

338 The Fa, mil}' Difficulty 

679 Where Two Ways Meet 

F. Du Boisgoliey’s Works. 

82 Sealed Lips 

104 The Coral Pirn 1st half 

104 The Coral Pin. 2d half 

264 Pi6douche, a French Detective 
328 Babiole, the Pretty Milliner. 

First half 

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Second half 

453 The Lottery Ticket 

475 The Prima Donna’s Husband. 

522 Zig-Zag, the Clown; or, The 

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523 The Consequences of a Duel. A 

Parisian Romance 

648 The Angel of the Bells 

697 The Pretty Jailer. 1st half... 

697 The Pretty Jailer. 2d half 

699 The Sculptor’s Daughter. 1st 

half 4 .' 

699 The Sculptor’s Daughter, 2d 

half 

782 The Closed Door. 1st half 

782 The Closed Door. 2d half 

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942 Cash on Delivery 

1076 The Mystery of an Omnibus.. 

1080 Bertha’s Secret. 1st half 

1080 Bertha’s Secret. 2d half 

1082 The Severed Hand. 1st half.. 
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coq. 1st half 

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2 Molly Bawn 

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950 Mrs. Geoffrey 

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118 Loys, Lord Berresford, and 

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134 The Witching Hour, and Other 
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136 “That Last Rehearsal,” and 

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166 Moonshine and Marguerites. .. 10 
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284 Doris 10 

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342 The Baby, and One New Year's 

Eve 10 

390 Mildred Trevanion 10 

404 In Durance Vile, and Other 

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486 Dick’s Sweetheart 20 

494 A Maiden All Forlorn, and Bar- 
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517 A Passive Crime, and Other 

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541 “ As It Fell Upon a Day.” 10 

733 Lady Branksmere 20 

771 A Mental Struggle 20 

785 The Haunted Chamber 10 

862 Ugly Barrington 10 

875 Lady Valworth’s Diamonds. . . 20 
1009 In an Evil Hour, and Other 

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1016 A Modern Circe '. 20 

1035 The Duchess 20 

1047 Marvel 20 

1103 The Honorable Mrs. Vereker. . 20 
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Alexander Dumas’s Works« 

55 The Three Guardsmen 20 

75 Twenty Years After 20 

259 The Bride of Monte-Cristo. A 
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262 The Count of Monte-Cristo. 

Part 1 30 

262 The Count of Monte-Cristo. 

Part II 30 

717 Beau Tancrede ; or. The Mar- 
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1053 Masanielio; or. The Fisherman 
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George Ebers’s Works. 

474 Serapis. An Historical Novel 20 

983 Uarda 20 

1056 The Bride of the Nile. 1st half ^ 
1056 The Bride of the Nile. 2d half 20 

1094 Homo Sum 20 

1097 The Burgomaster’s Wife 20 

1101 An Egyptian Princess. Vol. I. 20 
1101 An Egyptian Princess. Vol. II. 20 

1106 The Emperor 20 

1112 Onl}' a Word 20 

1114 The Sisters 20 

Maria Edgeworth’s Works. 

708 Ormond 20 

788 The Absentee. An Irish Story. 20 

Mrs. Annie Edwards’s Works. 

644 A Girton Girl 26 

834 A Ballroom Repentance 20 

835 Vivian the Beauty 20 

836 A Point of Honor 20 


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837 A Vagabond Heroine 

838 Ought We to Visit Her?. ...... 

839 Leah: A AVoman of Fashion.. 

841 Jet: Her Face or Her Fortune? 

842 A Blue-Stocking 

843 Archie Loveil 

844 Susan Fielding 

845 Philip Earnscliffe ; or, The 

Morals of May Fair 

846 Steven Lawrence. 1st half... 

846 Steven Lawrence. 2d half. . . . 
850 A Playwright’s Daughter 

George Eliot’s Works. 

3 The Mill on the Floss 

31 Middlemarch. 1st half 

31 Middlemarch. 2d half .. 

34 Daniel Deronda. 1st half 

34 Daniel Deronda. 2d half 

36 Adam Bede. 1st half 

36 Adam Bede. 2d half 

42 Romola 

693 Felix Holt, the Radical 

707 Silas Marner: The Weaver of 

Raveloe 

728 Janet’s Repentance 

762 Impresnaons of Theophrastus 
Such 

B. L, Farjeon’s Works. 

179 Little Make-Believe 

573 Love’s Harvest 

607 Self^^Doomed 

616 The Sacred Nugget 

657 Christmas Angel 

907 The Bright Star of Life 

909 The Nine of Hearts 

G. Manville Fenn’s Works, 

193 The Rosery Folk 

558 Poverty Corner 

587 The Parson o’ Dumford 

609 The Dark House . 

Octave Feuillet’s Works. 

66 The Romance of a Poor Young 

Man 

386 Led Astray; or, “ La Petite 
Comtesse ” 

Airs. Forrester’s Works. 

80 June 

280 Omnia Vanitas. A Tale of So- 
ciety 

484 Although He Was a Lord, and 

Other Tales 

715 I Have Lived and Loved. ..... 

721 Dolores 

724 My Lord and My Lady 

726 My Hero 

727 Fair Women 

7^ Mignon 

732 From Olympus to Hades 

734 Viva 

736 Roy and Viola 

740 Rhon.a. 

744 Diana Carew ; or, For a Wom- 
an’s Sake 

388 Once Again 


Jessie Fothergill’s Works* 

314 Peril 

572 Healey 

935 Borderland 

1099 The Lasses of Leverhouse. . . . 

K. £. Francilion’s Works* 

135 A Great Heiress: A Fortune 

in Seven Checks 

319 Face to Face : A Fact in Seven 

Fables 

360 Ropes of Sand 

656 The Golden Flood. By R. E. 

Francillon and Wm. Senior. . 

911 Golden Bells 

Emile Gaboriau’s Works* 

7 File No. 113 

42 Other People’s Money 

20 Within an Inch of His Life. . . 

26 Monsieur Lecoq. Vol I 

26 Monsieur Lecoq. Vol. II 

33 The Clique of Gold 

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43 The Mystery of Orcival 

144 Promises of Marriage 

979 The Count’s Secret. Part I. . . 

979 The Count’s Secret. Part II.. 

1002 Marriage at a Venture 

1015 A Thousand, Francs Reward.. 

1045 The 13th Hussars 

1078 The Slaves of Paris.— Black- 
mail. 1st half 

1078 The Slaves of Paris. — The 
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1083 The Little Old Man of the Bat- 
ignolles 

Charles Gibbon’s Works. 

64 A Maiden Fair 

317 By Mead and Stream 

James Grant’s Works. 

566 The Royal Highlanders; or. 
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781 The Secret Dispatch 

Miss Grant’s Works. 

222 The Sun-Maid 

555 Cara Roma 

Arthur Griffiths’s Works. 

614 No. 99 

680 Fast and Loose 

H. Rider Haggard’s Works. 
43‘J The Witch’s Head . S 

763 King Solomon’s Mines 

910 She: A History of Adventure. 

941 Jess 

959 Dawn 

989 Allan Quatermain 

1049 A Tale of Three Lions, and On 
Going Back 

1100 Mr. Meeson’s Will 

1105 Maiwa’s Revenge 

1140 Colonel Quaritch, V. C 

1145 My Fellow Laborer 

Thomas Hardy’s Works. 

139 The Romantic Adventures of 

a Milkmaid KSf 

580 A Pair of Blue Eyes....^ 2( 


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G90 Far From the Maddinu^ Ci’owd ‘20 
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945 The Trumpet-Major 20 

957 The Woodlanders 20 

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143 One False, Both Fair. 20 

358 Within the Clasp 20 

Mary Cecil Hay’s Works. 

65 Back to the Old Home 10 

72 Old Myddelton’s Money 20 

196 Hidden Perils 20 

197 For Her Dear Sake 20 

224 The Arundel Motto 20 

The Squire’s Legacy 20 

290 Nora’s Love Test 20 

408 Lester’s Secret >20 

678 Dorothy’s Venture 20 

716 Victor and Vanquished 20 

849 A Wicked Girl 20 

987 Brenda Yorke 20 

1026 A Dark Inheritance 20 

Mrs. Casliel-Hoey’s Works. 

313 The Lover's Creed 20 

802 A Stern Chase 20 

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509 Nell Hiiffenden 20 

714 ’Tvvixt I.ove and Duty 20 

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120 Tom Brown’s Soaool Days at 

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1139 Tom Brown at Oxford. Vol. II. 20 

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1127 Madam Mid.as 20 

Works by the Author of ** Judith 
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332 Judith Wynne 20 

506 Lady Lovelace 20 

William H. G. Kingston’s Works. 

117 A Tale of the Shore and Ocean 20 

133 Peter the Whaler. 10 

761 Will Weatherhelm 20 

763 The Midshipman, Slarmaduke 
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Vernon I zee’s Worr.ts. 

399 Miss Brown 20 

859 Ottilie: An Eighteenth Century 
Idyl. By Vernon Lee. The 
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ed by Vernon Lee 20 

Charles Lever’s Works. 

191 Harry Lorrequer 20 

212 Charles O’Malley, the Irish 

Dragoon. 1st half 20 

212 Charles O’Malley, the Irish 

Dragoon. 2d half 20 

243 Tom Burke of “ Ours.” 1st half 20 
243 Tom Burke of “ Ours.’ 2d half 20 


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473 A Lost Sou 2C 

620 Between the Heather and the 

Northern Sea 2d 

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122 Tone Stewart 20 

817 Stabbed in the Dark 10 

886 Paston Carevv, Millionaire and 

Miser 20 

1109 Through the Long Nights. 1st 

half 20 

1109 Through the Long Nights. 2d 

half 20 

Samuel Lover’s Works. 

663 Handy Andy 20 

664 Roi-y O’More a .. 20 

Edna Lyall’s Works. 

738 In the Golden Days 20 

1147 Knight-Errant. 20 

1149 Donovan: A Modern English- 
man. 20 


Sir E, Bulwer LyttoVs Works. 

40 The Last Days of Pompeii 20 

83 A Strange Storj' 20 

90 Ernest Maltravers 

130 TheLastof the Barons. 1st half 20 
130 The Last of the Barons. 2d half 20 

162 Eugene Aram 20 

164 Leila; or.The Siege of Grenada 10 
650 Alice ; or. The Mysteries. (A Se- 
quel to “Ernest Maltravers”) 20 

720 Paul Clifford 30 

1144 Rienzi. SO 


George Macdonald’s Works. 


282 Donal Grant 20 

325 The Portent lO 

326 Piiantastes. A Faerie Romance 

for Men and Women 10 

722 What’s Mine’s Mine 20 

1041 Home Again so 

1118 'J'he Elect Lady SO 

Katharine S. Macquoid’s W orks. 

479 Louisa so 

914 .Joan Wentwwth SO 

E. Marlitt’s Works. 

652 The Lady with the Rubies 20 

858 Old Ma’m’s( lie’s Secret 20 

972 Gold Elsie so 

999 The Second Wife SO 

1093 In the Schillingscourt 20 

1111 In the Counsellor's House. ... SO 

1113 Tlie Bailiffs Maid 20 

1115 The Countess Gisela 90 

1130 The Owl-House 20 

1136 The Princess of the Moor. ... SO 

Florence Marryat’s Works. 

159 Captain Norton’s Diary, and 

A Moment of Madness 10 

183 Old Contrairy, and Other 
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008 The Ghost of Charlotte Cray, 

and Other Stories 

276 Under the Lilies and Roses. . . 

444 The Pleart of Jane Warner 

449 Peeress and Player 

689 The Heir Presumptive 

825 The Master Passion 

860 Her Lord and Master 

861 My Sister the Actress 

863 “ My Own Child.” 

864 ” No Intentions.” 

865 Written in Fire 

866 Miss Harrington’s Husband; 

or. Spiders of Society 

867 The Girls of Feversham 

868 Petrouel 

869 The Poison of Asps 

870 Out of His Reckoning 

872 With Cupid’s Eyes 

873 A Harvest of Wild Oats 

877 Facing the Footlights 

893 Love’s Conflict. 1st half 

893 Love’s Conflict. 2d half 

895 A Star and a Heart 

897 Ange ; or, A Broken Blossom. 

899 A Little Stepson 

901 A Lucky Disappointment 

903 Phyllida 

905 The Fair-Haired Alda 

939 Why Not? 

993 Fighting the Air 

998 Open Sesame 

1004 Mad Duraaresq 

1013 The Confessions of Gerald Est- 

court 

1022 Driven to Bay 

1126 Gentleman and Courtier 

Captain Marryat’n Works. 

88 The Privateersman 

272 The Little Savage 

279 Rattlin, the Reefer 

991 Mr. Midshipman Easy 

Helen B. Mathers’ s Works. 

13 Eyre’s Acquittal 

221 Cornin’ Thro’ the Rye 

438 Found Out 

535 Murder or Manslaughter? 

673 Story of a Sin 

713 ” Clierry Ripe ” 

795 Sam’s Sweetheart 

. 798 Tho Fashion of this World — 

799 My Lady Green Sleeves 

Justin McCarthy’s Works. 

121 Maid of Athens 

002 Camiola 

685 England Under Gladstone. 

1880—1885 

747 Our Sensation Novel. Edited 
by Justin H. McCarthy, M.P. , 
77'9D6omI An Atlantic Episode.. 
George Meredith’s Works. 

350 Diana of the Crossways 

1146 Rhoda Fleming. 


U50 The Egotok 


Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller’s, 


Works. 

267 Laurel Vane; or. The Girls’ 

Conspiracy 20 

268 Lady Gay’s Pride; or, The 

Miser’s Treasure 20 

269 Lancaster’s Choice 20 

316 Sworn to Silence; or, Aline 

Rodney’s Secret 20 

Jean Middlemas’s Works. 

155 Lad}' Muriel’s Secret 20 

539 Silvermead 20 

Alan Muir’s Works. 

172 “Gulden Girls” 20 

346 Tumbledown Farm 10 

Miss Mulock’s Works. 

11 John Halifax, Gentleman. 1st 

half 20 

11 John Halifax, Gentleman. 2d 

half 20 

245 Miss Tommy, and In a House- 

Boat 10 

808 King Arthur. Not a Love Story 20 

1018 Two Marriages 20 

1038 Mistress and Maid 20 

1053 Young Mrs. Jardine 20 

David Christie Murray’s Works, 

58 By the Gate of the Sea 10 

195 “ The Way of the W^orld ” 20 

320 A Bit of Human Nature 10 

661 Rainbow Gold 20 

674 First Person Singular 20 

691 Valentine Strange 20 

695 Hearts: Queen, Knave, and 

Deuce 20 

698 A Life’s Atonement 20 

737 Aunt Rachel 10 

826 Cynic Fortune 90 

898 Bulldog and Butterfly, and Ju- 
lia and Her Romeo 20 

1102 Young Mr. Barter’s Repent- 
ance 10 


Works by the author of “ My 
Ducats and My Daughter.” 

376 The Crime of Christmas Day. 10 
596 My Ducats and My Daughter. . 20 


W. E. Norris’s Works. 

184 Thirl by Hall 20 

277 A Man of His Word 10 

3.55 That Terrible Man 10 

500 Adrian Vidal 20 

824 Her Own Doing 10 

848 My Friend Jim 20 

871 A Bachelor’s Blunder 20 

1019 Major and Minor. 1st half 20 

1019 Major and Minor. 2d half 20 

1084 Chris 20 

1141 The Rogue. 1st half 20 

1141 The Itogue. 2d half 20 

Laurence Oliphaut’s Works. 

47 Altiora Peto M 

587 Pio(»diUy 10 ^ 


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Mrs. Olipliant’s Works. 

45 A Pilgrim 10 

177 Salem Chapel 20 

305 Tlie Minister’s Wife 30 

331 The Prodigals, and Their In- 
heritance 10 

337 Memoirs and liesoiutious of 
Adam Graeme of Mossgra.y, 
including some Chronieles of 

the Borough ol Fendie 20 

345 Madam 20 

351 The House on the Moor 20 

3r,7 John 20 

370 Lucy Crofton . 10 

371 Margaret Maitland 20 

377 Magdalen Hepburn : A Story of 

the Scottish Reformation 20 

402 Lilliesleaf ; or, Passages in the 
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410 Old Ladv Mary 10 

527 The Davs of Mv Life 20 

528 At His Gates ilO 

568 The Perpetual Curate 20 

660 Harry Muir 20 

603 Agnes. 1st half 20 

603 Agnes. 2d half.. 20 

604 Innocent. 1st hall 20 

604 Inniocent. 2d half 20 

605 Ombra 20 

645 Gliver’s Bride 10 

655 The Open Door, and The Por 

trait iO 

687 A Country Gentleman 20 

703 A House Divided Against Itself 20 
710 The Greatest Heiress in Eng- 
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827 Effie Ogilvie 20 

880 The Son of His Father 20 

902 A Poor Gentleman.. 20 

P OiHda’s ” Works. 

4 Under Two I'lags 20 

9 Wanda, Countess von Szah as. 20 

116 Moths 20 

128 Afternoon, and Other Sketches 10 

226 Iriendslwp 20 

228 Princess Ilapraxine ^ 

238 Pascarel 20 

239 Signa 20 

4.33 A Rainy June 10 

639 Othrnar. 1st half 20 

6.3!) Obhmar. 2d half 20 

671 Don Gesualdo 10 

672 In Maremrna. 1st half 20 

672 In Maremrna. 2d half 20 

874 A House Party 10 

974 Strathmore; or. Wrought by 

His Own Hand. 1st half 20 

974 Strathmore; or, Wn'ught by 

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981 Granville de Vigne; or. Held in 

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981 Granville de Vigne; or. Held in 

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996 Idalia. 1st half 20 

9i)6 Idalia. 2d half 20 

1000 Puck. 1st half. 20 

1000 Puck. 2d half 20 


1003 Chandos. 1st half 

1003 Chandos. 2d half 

1017 Tricotrin. 1st half 

1017 Tricotrin. 2d half 

James I’ayn’s Works. 

48 T’tiicker Thau Water 

186 The Canon’s Ward 

343 The Talk of the Town 

577 In Peril and Privation 

589 The Luck of the Darrells 

823 The Heir of the Ages . . 

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660 The Scottish Chiefs. 1st half. 
660 The Scottish Chiefs. 2d half. 
696 Thaddeus of Warsaw 

Cecil Power's Works. 

336 Phi list ia 

611 Babylon 

Mrs. Campbell Px*aed’s Works. 

428 Zei'o ; A Story of Monte-Carlo 

477 Affinities 

811 The Head Station 

Eleanor C. Price’s Works. 

173 The Foreigners 

33! Gerald 

Charles Reade’s Works. 

46 Very Hard Cash 

98 A Woman-Hater 

206 The Picture, and Jack of All 

Trades 

210 Readiana : Comments on Cur- 
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213 A Terrible Temptation 

214 Put Yourself in His Place 

216 Foul Play 

231 Griffith Gaunt; or. Jealousy.. 

232 Love and Money ; or, A Peril- 

ous Secret 

235 “It is Never Too Late to 
Mend.’’ A Matter-of-Fact Ro- 
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i'tlrs. J. H. Riddell’s Works. 

71 A Struggle for Fame 

593 Bema Boyle 

1007 Miss Gascoigne 

1077 The Nun’s Curse 

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252 A Sinless Secret *. 

446 Dame Durden 

598 “Corinua.’’ A Study 

617 Like Dian’s Kiss 

1125 The Mystery of a Turkish Bath 

F. W. Robinson’s Works. 

157 Miily’sHero 

217 The Man She Cared For 

261 A Fair Maid 

4.55 Lazarus in London 

590 Tlie C!ourtiiig of Mary Smith. . 

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W. (Jlai'k Kussell’s Works. 

85 A Sea Queen 20 

109 Little Loo 2C 

180 Round the Galley Fire 10 

209 John Holdsworth, Chief Mate. 10 

223 A Sailor’s Sweetheart 20 

692 A Strange Voyage 20 

682 In the Middle Watch. Sea 

Stories 20 

713 Jack’s Courtship. 1st half... 20 

743 Jack’s Courtship. 2d half ^ 

884 A Voyage to the Cape 20 

9ie The Golden Hope 20 

1044 The Frozen Pirate ^ 

1048 The Wreck of the “Grosvenor ” 20 
1129 The Flying Dutchman; or, The 

Death Ship 20 

Adeline Sergeant’s Works. 

257 Beyond Recall 10 

812 No Saint 20 

Sir Walter Sco”tt’s Works. 

23 Ivanhoe 20 

201 The Monastery 20 

^2 The Abbot. (Sequel to “The 

Monastery ’’) 20 

353 The Blstek Dwarf, and A Le- 
gend of Montrose 20 

362 The Bride of Lammermoor. .. 20 

363 The Surgeon s Daughter 10 

364 Castle Dangerous 10 

391 The Heart of Mid-Lothian 20 

392 Peverh of the Peak 20 

393 The Pirate 20 

401 Waverley 20 

417 The Fair Maid of Perth ; or, St. 

Valentine’s Day 20 

418 St. Rouan’s Well 20 

463 Redgauntlet. A Tale of the 

Eighteenth Century 20 

507 Chronicles of the (Janongate, 

and Other Stories 10 

1060 The Lady of the Lake 20 

1063 Kenilworth. 1st half 20 

1063 Kenilworth. 2d half 20 

J. H. Shortliouse’s Works. 

Ill The Little School-master Mark 10 
1148 The Countess Eve 20 

William Sime’s Works. 

429 Boulderstone ; or. New Men 

and Old Populations 10 

580 The Red Route 20 

597 Ilaco the Dreamer 10 

649 Cradle and Spade , . . 20 

Hawley Smart’s Works. 

348 From Post to Finish. A Racing 

Romance 20 

367 Tie and Trick -. 20 

550 Struck Down 10 

847 Bad to Beat 10 

925 The Outsider 20 

Frank E. Smedley’s Works. 

333 Frank Fairlegh; or, Scenes 
from the Life of a Private 
Pupil 20 


562 Lewis Arundel ; or, The Rail- 
road of Life 30 


T. W. Speight’s Works. 

150 For Himself Alone 10 

653 A Barren Title 10 

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Works. 

686 Strange Case of Dr. Jekylland 

Mr. Hyde 10 

704 Prince Otto 10 

832 Kidnapped 20 

855 The Dynamiter ^ 

856 New Arabian Nights 20 

888 Treasure Island 10 

889 An Inland Voyage 10 

940 ’J'he Merry Men, and Other 

Tales and Fables 20 

1051 The Misadventures of John 

Nicholson 10 

1110 The Silverado Squatters 20 

Julian Sturgis’s Works. 

405 My Friends and I. Edited by 

Julian Sturgis 10 

694 John Maidment 20 


Eugene Sue’s Works. 

270 The Wandering Jew. Parti.. 30 

270 The Wandering Jew. PartH. 30 

271 The Mysteries of Paris. Part I 30 
271 The Mysteries of Paris. Part II 30 

George Temple’s Works. 


599 Lancelot Ward, M.P 10 

642 Britta 10 

William M. Thackeray’s Works. 

27 Vanity Fair. 1st half 20 

27 Vanity Fair. 2d half 20 

165 The History of Henry Esmond 20 
464 The Newcomes. Part I ....... . 20 

464 The Newcomes. Part II 20 

670 The Rose and the Ring. Illus- 
trated 10 

Works by the Author of “Tho 
Two Miss Flemings.” 

637 What's His Offence? 20 

780 Rare Pale Margaret 20 

784 The Two Miss Flemings 20 

831 Pomegranate Seed 20 

Annie Thomas’s Works. 

141 She Loved Him! 10 

142 Jenifer 20 

565 No Medium 10 

Bertha Thomas’s Works. 

389 Ichabod. A Portrait 10 

960 Elizabeth’s Fortune 30 

Count Lyof Tolstoi’s Works. 

1066 My Husband and 1 10 

1069 Polikouchka 10 

1071 The Death of Ivan Iliitch 10 

1073 Two Generations 10 

1090 The Cossacks 20 

1108 Sebastopol 20 

Anthony Trollope’s Works. 

32 The Land Leaguers 20 

93 Anthony Trollope’s Autobiog- 
raphy - SO 


12 


THE SE.VyiDE ^IBRARY-Poc ket Edition. 


147 Rachel Ray 20 

200 All Old Man’s Love 10 

531 The Prime Minister. 1st half. 20 
531 The Prime Minister. 2d half. . 20 

821 The Warden 10 

622 Harry Heathcote of Ganj^oil.. 10 
667 The Golden Lion of Granpere. 20 

700 Ralph the Heir. 1st half 20 

700 Ralpli the Heir. 2d half 20 

775 The Three Clerks 20 

iVIargaret Voiey’s Worke. 

298 Mitchelhurst Place 10 

586 “ For Percival ” 20 

Jules Verne’s Works. 

87 Dick Sand ; or, A Captain at 

Fifteen 20 

100-20,000 Leagues Under the Seas 20 
368 The Southern Star; or, the Dia- 
mond Land 20 

395 The Archipelago on Fire 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. Illustrated. 

Part 1 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. 111. Part II. 10 
578 Mathias Sandorf. 111. Part 111. 10 
659 The Waif of the “ Cynthia”.. 20 
751 Great Voyages aiid Great Navi- 
gators. 1st half ' 20 

751 Great Voyages and Great Navi- 
gators. 2d half 20 

833 Ticket No. ”9072.” 1st half.. . 10 
833 'I'icket No. ” 9672.” 2d lialf.. . 10 
976 Robur the Conqueror; or. A 
Trip Round the World in a 

Flying Machine.... 20 

1011 Texar’s Vengeance ; or, North 

Versus South. Parti 20 

1011 Texar’s Vengeance; or. North 

Versus South. Part II 20 

1020 Michael Strogoflf; or. The 

Courier of the Czar 20 

10.50 The Tour of the World in 80 
Dcivs . . • 20 

1152 From the Earth to tlie Moon. 

Ilhistrated 20 

1153 Round the Moon, illustrated 


William Ware’s Works. 


709 Zenobia ; or. The Fall of Pal- 
myra. 1st half 

709 Zenobia; or, Tiio Fall of Pal- 
myra. 2d half 

760 Aitrelian ; or, Rome in the Third 
Century 


20 

20 

20 


Samuel Warren's Works. 


406 The Merchant’s Clerk 10 

1142 Ten Tliousand a Year. Part I 20 
1142 Ten Thousand a Year. Part II 20 
1142 Ten Thousand a Year. Part III 20 


Works by the Author of “ Wedded 
Hauds.” 


628 Wedded Hands 20 

968 Blossom and Fruit ; or, Mad- 
ame’s Ward 20 

E. Werner's Works. 

327 Raymond’s Atonement 20 

540 At a High Price 20 

1067 Saint Michael. 1st half ^ 

1067 Saint Michael. 2d half ^ 

1089 Home Sounds 20 

1154 A Judgment of God 20 

fJ.'J. Whyte-Melvillc’s Works. 

409 Roy’s Wife 20 

451 Market Harborough, and In- 
side the Bar 20 

John Strange Winter’s Works. 
492 Booties’ Baby; or, Mignon. Il- 
lustrated 10 

600 Honp-La. Illustrated 10 

638 In Quarters w'ith the 25th (The 

]?lack Horse) Dragoons 10 

688 A Man of Honor. Illustrated. 10 
746 Cavalry Life: or. Sketches and 

Stories in Barracks and Oui 20 
813 Army Society. Life in a Gar- 
rison Town. 10 

818 Pluck. 10 

876 IMignon’s Secret lO 

966 A Siege Baby and Childhood’s 
Memories 20 


Jj, B. Walford’s Works. 

241 Tlie Bal)y’s Grandmother 10 

2.56 Mr. Smith : A Part of His Life 20 

258 Cousins 20 

658 The History of a Week lO 

Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Works. 

309 Miss Bretherton 10 

1116 Robert Elsmere. 1st half 20 

1116 Robert Elsmere. 2d half 20 

F. Warden’s Works. 

192 At the World's Mercy 10 

248 The House on the Marsh 10 

286 Deldee; or. The Iron Hand... 20 

482 A Vagrant Wife ^ 

556 A Prince of Darkness 20 

820 Doris's Fortune ^ 

1037 Scheheraz;id«* : A London 

Night’s Entertainment 20 

Jt)87 A Woman’s Face; or, A Lake- 
lami Mystery 20 


971 Garrison Gossip; Gathered in 

Blankhampton 20 

1032 Mignou’s Husband 20 

1039 Driver Dallas lo 

1079 Beautiful Jim: of the Blank- 

shire Regiment 20 

1117 Princess Sarah lo 

1121 Booties’ Children 10 

Mrs. Henry Wood’s Works. 

8 East Lynne. 1st half 20 

8 Ea.st Lynne 2d half 20 

2.55 The Mysteiy 20 

277 The Surgeon’s Daughters 10 

508 The Unholy Wish 10 

513 Helen Whitney’s Wedding, and 

Other Tales 10 

514 The Mystery of Jessy Pcge, 

aiul Other Ta,les lo 

610 The Story of Dorothy Grape, 

.and Other Tales lO 

1001 Lady Adelaide’s Oath; or, The 
Castle’s Heir 9 () 


THE SEASIDE LiHllAHY — l’ocKi:T Edition. 


13 


The Heir to Ashley, uud The 


Red-Court Fanil 20' 

.lOiJT A Life’s Secret 20 

1042 Lady Grace 20 

Charlotte M. Yonge’s Works. 

247 The Armourer’s Prentices 10 

27o The Three Brides 10 

535 Henrietta’s Wisii; or. Domi- 
neering’ 10 

503 Tlie Two Sides of the Shield... 20 

1)40 Nuttie’s Father 20 

0G5 The Dove in tho Eagle’s Nest. 20 
(306 My Young Alcides: A Faded 

Photograph 20 

730 The Caged Lion 20 

742 Love and Life 20 

783 Chantry House 20 

790 The Chaplet of Pearls; or, The 
Wliite and Black Ribaumont. 

1st half 20 

790 The Chaplet of P.earls; or. The 
White and Black Ribaumont. 

2d half 20 

800 Hopes and Fears; or. Scenes 
from the Life of a Spinster. 

1st half 20 

800 Hopes and Fears; or. Scenes 
from the Life of a Spinster. 

2d half 20 

887 A Modern Telemachus 20 

1024 Under the Storm; or. Stead- 
fast’s Charge 20 

11S3 Our New Mistress 20 

Miscellaneous. 

53 The Story of Ida. France.sea.. 10 
61 Charlotte Temple. Mrs. Row- 

son 10 

99 Barba ra’.s History. Amelia B. 

Ed wail is 20 

103 Rose Fleiniiig. Dora Russell. . 10 
105 A Noble Wile. John Saunders 20 

112 The Waters of Marah. John 

Hill 20 

113 Mrs. Carr’s Companion. M. 6. 

Wightwick 10 

114 Some of Our Girls. Mrs. C. J. 

Eiloart 20 

115 Diamond Cut Diamond. T. 

Adolphus Trollope 10 

127 Adrian Bright. Mrs. Caddy 20 

■(49 The Captain’s Daughter. From 

the Russian of Pushkin 10 

151 The Ducie Diamonds. C. Blath- 

erwick 10 

156 “For a Dream’s Sake.” Mrs. 

Herbert Martin 20 

158 The Starling. Norman Mac- 

leod. D.D 10 

160 Her Gentle Deeds. Sarah Tytler 10 

161 The Lady of Lyons. Founded 

on the Play of that title b}’^ 

Lord Lytton 10 

163 Winifred Power. Joyce Dar- 
rell 20 

I'l'O Great Treason, A. By Mary 
^oppus. 1st half 20 


! 

170 Great Treason, A. By Mary 

Hoppus. 2d half 20 

174 Under a B.an. Mrs. TiOdge ^ 

176 An April Daj'. Philippa Pri4- 

fieJeplison 10 

178 More Leaves from the Journal 
of a Life in the Highlands. 

Queen Victoria 10 

182 The Millionaire 20 

185 Dita. Lady Margaret Majendie 10 
187 Tlie Midnight Sun. Fredrika 

Bremer 10 

198 A Husband’s Story 10 

203 John Bull and His Island. Max 

O’Rell.' 10 

218 Agnes Sorel. G. P. R. James. . 20 

219 Lady Clare ; or, The Master of 

the Forges. Georges Olmet 10 
242 The Two Orphans. D’Euneri’-. 10^ 
253 The Amazon. Carl Vosmaer . . 10* 
266 The Water-Babies. Rev. Chas. 

Kingsley 10 

274 Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, 
Princess of Great Britain and 
Ireland. Biographical Sketch 

and Letters 10 

285 The Gambler’s Wife. 20 

289 John Bull’s Neighbor in Her 
True Light. A ” Brutal Sax- 
on ” 10 

311 Two Years Before the Mast. R. 

H. Dana, Jr 20 

329 The Polish Jew. (Translated ; | 

from the French by Caroline a 
A. Merighi.) Erckmann-Chat- 
rian , 10 

330 May Blossom ; or. Between Two 

Loves. Margaret Lee 20 

334 A Marriage of Convenience. 

Harriett Jay ' 10 

335 The White Witch 20 

340 Under Which King? (iomplon 

Reade 20 

341 Maaoliu Rivers; or. The Little 

Beauty of R»^(l Oak Seminari'. 

Laura Jean Li bbey 20 

347 As Avon Flows. Heni-y Scott 

Vince 20 

352 At Any Cost Edward Garrett. 10 
354 The Lottery of Life. A Story 
of New York Twenty Years 
Ago. John Brougham 20 


3.55 Tue Princess Dagomar of Po- 
land. Heinrich Felbermann. 10 
356 A Good Hater. Frederick Boyle 20 
365 George Christy; or. The Fort- 


unes of a Minstrel. Tony' 

Pastor .*. 20 

366 The Mysterious Hunter; or. 
The Man of Death. Capt. L. 

0. Carieton 20 

374 The Dead Man’s Secret. Dr. 

Jupiter Paeon 20 

381 The Red Cardinal. Frances 

Elliot 10 

382 Three Sisters. Elsa D’Eaterre- 

Keeling 10 

383 Introduced to Society. Hamil- 

ton Aid6 . - — 10 


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669 Pole on Wliist 
432 THIS WITCH’S HEAD. By 

H. Rider Haggrard 

1164 Rob Roy. By Sir Walter Scott, 
Bart. IsPhalf. 

1164 Rob Roy. By Sir Walter Scott, 

Bart. 2d half 

1165 The Sea-King. By Captain 

Marryat 

1166 The Betrothed : A Tale of the 

Crusaders, and the Chronicles 
of the Canongate. By Sir 
Walter Scott, Bart. 1st half. 20 

1166 The Betrothed : A Tale of the 

Crusaders, and the Chronicles 
of the Canongate. By Sir 
Walter Scott, Bart. 2d half. . 20 

1167 Captain Contanceati; or, The 

Volunteers of 1792. By Emile 


Gaboriau 20 

1168 The Flight to France; or. The 

Memoirs of a Dragoon. A 
Tale of the Day of Dumouriez. 

By Jules Verne 20 

1169 Commodore Junk. ByG. Man- 

ville Fenn 20 

1171 Sophy Carmine. By John S. 

Winter 20 

1172 India and her Neighbors. By 

W. P. Andrew.... 20 

1173 Won by Waiting. By Edna 

Lyall ' 20 

1174 The Polish Princess. By I. I. 

Kraszewski 20 

1175 A Tale of an Old Castle. By 

W. Heimburg 20 

1176 Guilderoy. By “Ouida” 20 

1177 A Dangerous Cat’s-paw. By 

David Christie Murray and 
Henry Murray 20 

1178 St. Cuthbert’s Tower. By Flor- 

ence Warden 20 

1179 Beauty’s Marriage; or, “What 

Some Have Found so Sweet.” 

By Charlotte M. Braeme 10 

1180 The Two Chiefs of Dunboy ; or, 

An Irish Romance of the Last 
Century. By J. A. Fioude. . . 20 

1181 The Fairy of 'the Alps. By E. 

Werner 20 

1182 The Reproach of Annesley. 

By Maxwell Gray 20 


pniCE. 

1183 Jack of Hearts. A Story of 

Bohemia. By H. T, Johnson. 20 

1184 A Crown of Shame. By Flor- 

ence Marryat 20 

1186 Guelda. A Novel 20 

1187 Suzanne. By the author of “A 

Great Mistake” 20 

1188 My Heart’s Darling. By W. 

Heimburg 20 

1189 A Crooked Path. By Mrs. Al- 

1190 C JiEOPATllA:' Being an Ac- 

count of the Fall and Venge- 
ance of Harmachis, the Royal 
Egyptian, as set forth by His 
Own Hand. By H. Rider 


Haggard 20 

1191 On Circumstantial Evidence. 

By Florence Marryat 20 

1192 Miss Kate ; or, Confessions of 

a Caretaker. By “Rita” 20 

1193 The Fog Princes, A Romance 

of the Dark Metropolis. By 
Florence Warden 20 

1194 The Search for Basil Lynd- 

hurst. By Rosa Nouchette 

Carey 30 

1197 The Autobiography of a Slan- 
der, by Edna Lyall; -and 
“ Jerry.”— “ That Night in 
June.”— A Wrong Turning. — 
Irish Love and Marriage. By 

the “Duchess.”.- 10 

1199 A False Scent. By Mrs. Alex- 
ander 10 

1201 Mehalah. A Story of the Salt 

Marshes. By S. Baring-Gould. 20 

1202 Harvest. By John Strange 

Winter 20 

1204 The Lodge by the Sea. By 

Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron 20 

1205 A Lost Wife. By Mrs. H. Lov- 

ett Cameron 20 

1206 Derrick Vaughan — Novelist. 

By Edna Lyall 10 

1207 The Princess and the Jew. By 

I. I. Kraszewski 20 

1208 Merle’s Crusade. By Rosa Nou- 

chette Carey 20 

1209 A Troublesome Girl. By “ The 

Duc1i6SS . * 20 

1210 Marooned. By W.Clark Russell 20 


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